— l ^T-■m"^n"^^■^ ^^ "' ^^ r ^ " ^" m t i > w r KT TT'rrrrr'rt -- pwrrf^ fTf" 1 "— *■*"* CLIVEDEN LIBRARY Shelf ft_a..-k*A.jpU«^ Number T)ate . . ^.!L3 W&k*f ASTOR Nancy THE DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT IN FRANCE DUR- ING TWENTY-TWO WEEKS OF WAR TIME ^> o THE DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT IN FRANCE DUR- ING TWENTY-TWO WEEKS OF WAR TIME 000 NICE, MONTE CARLO, VILLEFRANCHE, TOULON, PARIS, ROUEN, LE HAVRE, SOUTHAMPTON, LONDON, DIEPPE, PROVINS, MONTCEAUX ST. BON, CHAMPROSAY, REIMS, BORDEAUX, TARASCON, MARSEILLE BY ROWLAND STRONG LONDON EVELEIGH NASH 1915 CONTENTS FIRST WEEK . SECOND WEEK . THIRD WEEK . FOURTH WEEK FIFTH WEEK . SIXTH WEEK . SEVENTH WEEK EIGHTH AND NINTH WEEKS TENTH WEEK . ELEVENTH WEEK TWELFTH WEEK THIRTEENTH WEEK FOURTEENTH WEEK FIFTEENTH WEEK SIXTEENTH WEEK SEVENTEENTH WEEK EIGHTEENTH WEEK NINETEENTH WEEK TWENTIETH WEEK TWENTY-FIRST WEEK TWENTY-SECOND WEEK PAGE 7 57 7° 100 114 134 168 184 191 201 2TO 2l8 244 258 278 287 296 3 1 * 326 34i THE DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT IN FRANCE DURING TWENTY-TWO WEEKS OF WAR TIME NICE Entrenched Camp of Nice, henceforward in the military state of siege. FIRST WEEK Aug. i st. — It may seem paradoxical to be spend- ing the summer in Nice. But what, after all, is a paradox other than an empty platitude, torn inside out to show its hollowness? It was as a summer station that Nice was invented, and now that people spend their winters in the snow, it is reasonable that they should seek sunshine in the summer. Moreover, the ideal season for Nice is the summer. I have heard it said of the Temple, by one of its faithful inhabitants, that it has the advantage over all other residences of combining the tranquillity of a university college with the licence of . . . the city. Similarly it may be said of Nice in the summer that to the privileges and conveniences of a civilised and well-supplied town, surrounded by sea and mountain, it adds a rare vacational charm, born of the absence of all disturbing movement. The noisy cosmopolitan mob has left, the Germans, who made up the largest and the most ill-mannered 7 8 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT proportion of it, for ever, it is to be hoped. Be- neath the unchanging azure of the sky the crystal- clear air is still. The placid sea hums with purple contentment. Food is cheap; the market is ablaze with the myriad hues of gorgeous vegetables and fruits and flowers. The country is smothered in flowers. There are no mosquitoes to speak of, and no wasps. It is in the midst of these ideal condi- tions of well-being, happiness and peace that the war-trumpets are blaring forth their messages of hatred and strife. Ten days ago, or thereabouts, my old and valued friend, Captain F. C. Philips — who having been a brilliant officer in his early manhood, is now world- famous as the author of As in a Looking-glass and many other delightful novels — showed me a letter from His Excellency, M. Chedo Miyatovich, formerly Serbian Minister in London, and still a very prominent and influential Serbian statesman, who had just come back from Belgrade, where he had been in conference with the Crown Prince Regent and the Serbian Prime Minister. The letter concluded with the remark that the murder of the Crown Prince of Austria was a terrible thing for Serbia, and the outlook was as black as could be. Three days afterwards I was lunching at the officers' "carre," or mess on the R , French dreadnought, stationed at Golfe Juan. My host, Lieutenant de Vaisseau D , who, by the way, is one of the most skilful and original artists in black and white that I have ever known, and I have known a few, casually asked me whether there was any political news. I could think of none, so little impression, I am ashamed to say, had M. Miyato- IN FRANCE 9 vich's warning left on my memory. Moreover, I had received from Vienna a postcard from Aubrey Stanhope of the New York Herald, the most active and best-informed Foreign Correspondent in Europe, dated July 14th (Philips' letter was dated the 13th), bearing a coloured portrait of the old Emperor Francis Joseph in a red collar embroidered with gold, a horrible arrangement of meaty reds making him look, as I thought at the time, as if he had been sponging his face with blood. On the card Stanhope told me that he had just returned from Belgrade, and was off to Berlin. "It was hot as Hell in Serbia," he added, "but interesting. Now is the moment for you to come to Berlin ! Hurry up ! " Well, I actually hesitated as to whether I would go to Berlin or not, and I am glad I didn't. I am wondering now what has become of my friend Stanhope. He has always been very conscientious and outspoken, and the Germans, some of them, are such a revengeful, cowardly people. The fact is that no one in France, and very few outside of it, had much idea that the peace of Europe was threatened. Perhaps England had a serious inkling, for the great review at Spit- head is now looked on in France as an extra- ordinarily clever move on the British Government's part to mobilise the fleet without rousing suspicion or provoking questions. But even M. Poincare had gone gaily off to St. Petersburg, and the whole world was in a turmoil before he broke off his tour of northern Europe and could get back to Paris. A few of us here, including friend Moro, director of the Petit Nigois, tried to nourish a forlorn hope, in which we had very little belief, that Germany 10 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT would withdraw at the last moment. " L' Allemagne a l'air de flancher ! " (Germany seems to be waver- ing). This is the expression that both Moro and I had on the tips of our tongues, when I met him hurrying to his office last night. But, at that very moment, one of his own office-men was hanging out from the windows of the Petit Nicois, ten yards away, a huge transparency which announced that, according to a private telegram from the Mayor of Lyons, German troops had entered French territory at three different points. The crowd clapped their hands, but there have been no other noisy demon- strations, beyond the marching past of a few bands of youths, waving tricolour flags, and singing the "Marseillaise," as well as a rollicking ditty : "C'est l'Alsac-e, 1' Alsace et la Lorrain-e, C'est PAlsac-e qu'il nous faut ! " May they get it ! The day before yesterday certain unscrupulous speculators made a corner in potatoes, the price of which suddenly went up to 5oulede is to have a street named after him somewhere else in the town. Market prices are slowly going up all round, except, oddly enough, for potatoes, which are down to fifty-five centimes for four pounds. For com- modities which are in demand for army purposes IN FRANCE 58 the prices, of course, rule higher still. Petrol, for lamps, for instance, has risen from forty to sixty centimes the litre. There is no official censorship exercised on letters passing- between Nice and England, though no doubt the military authorities keep an eye on them, and any letter about which there is any sus- picion would certainly be opened. Aug. 14th. — I visited to-day the military hospital which is established in the Hotel Majestic, and is under the direction of a surgeon-major and of Dr. A . There were sixty-four ladies of various ages waiting for the doctor when I arrived, including several Sisters of the Holy Sacrament. They all belonged to the Red Cross. Dr. A showed them over the place, explaining the organisation. He then gave them a lecture on nursing. A good deal of what he said seemed rather elementary. For instance, he was careful to explain to them that each separate medicine should be administered with a separate spoon, and on no account were they to use the same spoon for all medicines and the patients indiscriminately. The wisdom of this advice was perhaps apparent when he added: "All this may seem to go without saying, but full as you are of good-will now, you will be surprised to find how careless you may become when the monotony of doing the same thing over and over again begins to wear upon your nerves, or when you are thoroughly tired out. You cannot, therefore, be too careful to school yourselves from the very beginning to habits of precision, so that they may develop into a second nature." 54 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT The rooms of the Majestic make grand hospital wards. The patients will be admirably lodged so far as light and ventilation are concerned. No wounded or sick will be treated in Paris, at least to begin with, and, of course, no very bad cases will be sent to Nice if it can be helped, owing to the long journey. Still, there will be plenty for the Red Cross ladies to do. For the moment there is, I understand, a certain rivalry between the Red Cross and the Military Hospital which is to the advantage of neither. The Red Cross having been naturally first in the field have collared all the money subscriptions and gifts from the public, and all the best nurses. When the military hospital made a request to them for nurses, they sent only those without diplomas, the "bottom of the basket " as it were. But it is into the military hospital that the wounded will first of all be drafted, and it is only when it is full that the turn will come of the auxiliary hospitals managed by the Red Cross. The consequence is, that while the military hospital will be understaffed, the Red Cross will be over- staffed, with nothing to do. Yesterday seventeen wounded arrived at Marseilles, and there are no less than 350 nurses of the Red Cross to nurse them. Dr. A thinks that they are in danger of being killed with kindness. The military authorities do not, it appears, supply everything that is needed in a military hospital. Apart from such extras as jam, books, draughts, dominoes (no cards are allowed), for which an appeal will be made to the charitable public, there is a lack of sheets, flannel waistcoats and waist- bands, footbaths, water-bottles, small tables, over- IN FRANCE 55 alls for the male nurses, pails, bed-pans and money. Dr. B asked me whether I knew of any one in Nice who could organise a public appeal for con- tributions to supply these wants, and I took him to V 's, where W was, and W at once agreed to interest the Syndicate of Hotel Proprietors in the matter. Unfortunately, there are a lot of petty jealousies in Nice, which make concerted efforts difficult. The general attitude of the Nicois is, as a rule, apathetic towards what does not immediately concern himself. For instance, out of the sixty-four nurses who have volunteered for service at the Hotel Majestic, there are at most, so Dr. A tells me, four Nicoises ! Three of the big Nice hotels have been turned into hospitals in addition to the Majestic : the Hotel d'Angleterre, the Atlantic and the Riviera. The Majestic has 240 beds, of which 151 have been fur- nished by the Majestic, and 89 by the Hotel Terminus. In the evening I went to see Madame N , who presides over the distribution of soup at the Hotel . She and N are stopping there with their son Rene. With C , the proprietor, and W and N , Dr. C , the Mayor of C , and a bevy of Red Cross ladies to whom I was intro- duced, it was quite a family party. At their earnest entreaty I took off my coat so as not to shame the others who were in shirt-sleeves. C produced some of his best brandy. They were very gay. C , who is of German naturalised Swiss birth, and N executed a "pas-deux" which was intended to show off the remarkable resem- blance which they have both with one another and 56 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT with the late King Edward VII. We drank to our future success — "a nos victoires ! " Madame N complains that the military authorities refuse to cede a single tin of petrol to enable the Red Cross to run its motor-cars with, which perhaps explains the relative coldness of the Red Cross towards the Military Hospital. The fact is, that G and W have had to give up using G 's little car for distributing butchers' bones and things to the various soup kitchens and canteens here for lack of petrol, and they complain that the rich Nicois who have a local pull with the Mairie get all the petrol they like, without even paying for it, as it comes from the military stores, and daily drive about Nice with their gorgeously dressed womenkind, on parties of pure pleasure, while G , who has been working for the public weal from five in the morning onwards (he is not usually an early riser), and is willing to pay for his petrol, is brought to a full stop in the midst of his philanthropic activities. I have asked Dr. A to use his influence to put a stop to this state of affairs, which is mildly scan- dalous. What is specially aggravating is that petrol can be purchased (so we are told) without the slightest difficulty in every other department of France, except the Alpes Maritimes. General Galopin, our military governor, had, I know, the reputation with his men (the Countess' nephew told us this), of being over devoted to red tape, which may explain this anomalous situation in some measure. He is to be credited, however, with having directed the mobilisation here with marvellous skill. The Countess' nephew, by the way, has not yet left Antibes. THIRD WEEK Aug. 15th. — The military activity is now intense. I am, unfortunately, close to the Sud de la France Railway, and all day long and all night long one hears the tramp of marching regiments and the thunder and whistling of trains, bringing up, on the "Sud" line, enormous quantities of flour, general provisions and straw from the neighbouring Alpine districts, while on the P.L.M. thousands of soldiers are being hurried to the front, or concen- trated here from all parts of Provence prior to their departure. In the broad avenues every morning there is the early inspection of the troops, now most of them territorials, who will remain here or in the neighbourhood, at least for the present, until Italy's final intentions are known, and the passers-by take a languid interest in the proceedings, with the roll- call, and verifying of the sick-list, and distribution of letters. In the evening a regiment of the 15th Army Corps, mostly composed of Nicois, left for the front, amidst great enthusiasm and hand-clapping. The men marched splendidly with a long rolling stride which carried them along at an amazing pace. All were in the highest spirits. Flowers and little flags of the allied nations were stuck in the muzzles of their rifles. They sang songs, patriotic and comic. Some of their improvised banners bore the historical 57 58 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT phrase "A Berlin!" but there was more humour than boastfulness in this. At the head of the line many an old father was to be seen marching silently along in step with his soldier son, with set face; smothering his emotions with the energetic atten- tiveness that he put into his feet. Aug. 16th. — To-day I obtained at the post office the payment of a money order sent in reply to a cheque which I forwarded to the bank in London on the 2nd of August. A letter came from my young friend Comte J. de B , who is to go to the front, he thinks, at the end of the month. He writes : "A Paris on ne se croirait, pas en temps de guerre. Tout est calme, et la vie n'a pas change." (In Paris one would not think that war was going on. Everything is quiet, and the world wags on as usual.) The great news is that the Czar intends to give home rule to Poland, and to re-establish the ancient boundaries of Poland by depriving Germany and Austria of their Polish possessions, and uniting these as an autonomous country under Russian suzerainty. ,No less than 30,000,000 Poles are thus thrown upon the backs of Germany and Austria, for this is, or rather was a few years ago, the approxi- mate census of the Polish race, including the large Polish population in the United States and else- where. Now, the Poles are just as clannish as the Irish, and like them they have never given up the struggle for the recovery of their nation's freedom. The Russians, it must be admitted, have treated them with terrible harshness, but not worse than have the Germans; in connection wherewith 1 IN FRANCE 59 remember a few years ago when the German Emperor was stopping in some Englishman's country mansion in the Isle of Wight he received a deputation of English school-children who had been taught in that spirit of parochial snobbishness which is often unfortunately evident in England, to lick-spittle to the German "Royalty," sing him the German national anthem, and present him with flowers. Even with these poor little ignorant wretches he put on a blustering "side," as if their silly and ill-timed demonstration was a natural homage. Ill-timed indeed ! for at that very time a most abominable repression was being exercised by the German schoolmasters on the little Polish children in German Poland who were being flogged by order of the government, that is to say of William II, if they were caught even saying their prayers in Polish. Many an heroic little Polish school-boy and school-girl had braved the cruellest beatings sooner than deny their sacred mother tongue. And it was the cowardly monster re- sponsible for this atrocity that the little English school-children were being taught to adulate. The fact is that a certain type of English people are largely to blame for the huge success of the German "bluff," political, commercial and moral, organised with such colossal stage-managing skill by the German Emperor, whose schemes they have constantly aided and abetted, to the detriment of their own national interests. Snobbishness, or merely love of pelf, have been the almost invariable motive forces that have driven them to commit this folly. There is an instance of it to be seen even at Nice. In the "salle des depeches " of the Petit 60 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT Nigois a number of illustrated newspapers are dis- played. One of these is a London publication, and all its pictures, evidently communicated from Ger- many, are of a nature to inspire sympathy with the German army. There is the German reservist "kissing baby " before leaving - for the front, a most touching domestic scene. Perhaps this is the same German reservist who stamped a little French baby to death with his heel on the Alsatian frontier a few days ago. Then there is the enthusiastic send-off of the Kronprinz by the population of Berlin. What with the wording of the text underneath, and the amiable smile on the Kronprinz's intellectual features, the enthusiasm is almost catching. But it has not quite caught the Nice public, however much it may have favourably affected the London readers of this newspaper, for among all the pictures exhibited, these English ones alone have been in- dignantly torn in two. As an Englishman it makes one blush to see such an exhibition of bad taste, combined with stupidity on the part of one's countrymen, and to be forced to the conclusion that there are newspapers in London willing to sell any- thing, including England, and betray any cause, however sacred, just to earn halfpennies. One of the immediate results of the Czar's pro- clamation to Poland will be to render very difficult the getting in of the crops throughout the whole of Eastern Prussia. The Poles have been to Prussia what the Belgians are to the north, and the Italians to the south of France. Most of the rough agri- cultural work is done by them. When the wheat harvest was ready for reaping, an army of Poles would "trek " over from Russian Poland, camp near IN FRANCE 61 the fields, live upon next to nothing, gather in the corn, and do it for next to nothing. The German farmers treated them little better than beasts. But beneath their patient, silent endurance, there burned, as there does in every Polish heart through- out the world, the undying national faith, expressed by their patriotic song: "Polen, Polen wird nie verloren ! " (Poland, Poland shall never be lost !) These are not the people to sell their country for a halfpenny, or even for a harvest wage, and unless I am very much mistaken, the Germans this year will be left to reap their own crops. But apart from these humble peasants, who are still but little in advance of their serf ancestors, there are the highly cultivated Poles, who repre- sent the upper classes of the Polish nation, and in a large measure the brain and the civilisation of the Teutonic races with which they have been incor- porated. In literature, science and art, in diplomacy, in politics, in the Catholic Church, the Poles play a leading, almost a predominant, role both in Germany and Austria. Numerous are the illustrious ambassadors, influential cardinals and brilliant statesmen, having helped to shape the des- tinies of these two empires, who have been Poles. To mention only one, the German ambassador, who has just quitted London, Prince Lichnowsky, is a Pole, and it would be one of the strange but quite probable ironies of the situation which might arise, if he were to pass over into Russian service when the war is over, and become the first Lieutenant- Governor of resuscitated Poland. For the country that has produced Chopin, Sienkiewicz, Paderew- ski and Madame Curie, to be under the heel of the 62 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT brutal German junker and be judged unfit to govern itself, is a grotesque anomaly. Whenever the German has come into rivalry with the Pole on anything like equal terms the Pole has been the winner. In spite of every effort made by the German government to favour the colonisation of German Poland by Germans and to oust the Pole, and these efforts have been pursued with ruthless indifference to the most ordinary principles of fair dealing, or common honesty, the Pole, owing to his quicker wit and greater "keenness," has always come out at the top ; and it is in his hands that, in spite of all the efforts of the German intruders, backed up by a brutal and unscrupulous govern- ment, the capital, the industries and the wealth of the country have constantly been and still are con- centrated. This has so enraged the Germans within recent years that they have tried to get the best of their imperturbable rivals by means of wholesale expropriations of property, and the creation of all kinds of political and commercial disabilities directed against the Poles to induce them to abandon the struggle and leave the country, but never with any lasting success. Sooner or later, the courage and intelligence in which Poles are superior to the Prussians have won the day. The abominable treatment of the Polish school-children to which I havfe already referred was the sequel to one of the many explosions of anger and cowardly spite provoked among the Germans by their un- failing failure to wipe Poland from the map of Europe. In Paris the Poles have always been a model colony, full of love for France, and bound together IN FRANCE 63 by a freemasonry of enthusiastic patriotism. Their leader, the uncrowned King of Poland, Prince Czartorisky, is allied by marriage to the House of France, and once a year, in addition to aiding many charitable organisations for the benefit of poor Poles, he opens his magnificent and historical mansion, the Hotel Lambert, on the Quai d'Anjou, to all Poles without exception, and entertains them royally. His benevolence and courtesy are as un- bounded as the affection and loyal devotion felt for him by his countrymen, who look upon him almost as their sovereign. The Hotel Lambert, which has been in the possession of the Czartorisky family since 1842, is so named after President Lambert de Thorigny, for whom it was built in 1680 by the great architect Le Vau. The interior is decorated by Lesueur and Lebrun, and contains some magni- ficent and priceless tapestries. Towards the middle of the eighteenth century it became the property of the Marquis du Chatelet, whose marchioness was the celebrated friend of Voltaire, and entertained him there. The Poles have constantly espoused with splendid courage the cause of France, whenever there has been any fighting to do, and did not swerve in their loyalty towards her, in spite of the fact that Napoleon never would or could keep his promise to resuscitate Polish independence. These broken national hopes notwithstanding, the Polish Legion, with Poniatowsky at its head, fought with heroic, undiminished dash during the disastrous Russian campaign, when their leader lost his life. There has always been a bond of perfect good- feeling between Poland and England. Poland has 64 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT cherished the belief that, should a really favourable occasion ever arise, England would do her utmost to further the legitimate aspirations of the Polish people for national independence. It is not so very long ago (less than twenty years) that the Poles received a satisfactory assurance that Great Britain would demonstrate with her fleet in their favour as soon as they were in a position to make a concerted and reasonable effort to throw off the foreign yoke ; but this moment, for a complexity of reasons, never came, perhaps never would have come, in any other but the present conditions. Aug. lyth. — Paid a visit to Villefranche, which is full of troops. G 's mysterious three-masted schooner turns out to have two masts exactly. Late in the afternoon W and I were sitting on the "terrasse" of the cafe opposite the Octroi, when a polite old personage, with a band on his arm embroidered with the letters "A.M." (Alpes Maritimes, presumably), came to our table and asked whether we were not foreigners. W showed him his permis de sejour for Villefranche, and I my laisser-passer. He approved of W 's document, but to me he said, in a whisper, and screening his face with his hat, so as not to be heard by by- standers, "This paper is good only for Nice ; another time you must, my dear sir, provide yourself with a laisser-passer. Of course, it is of no consequence for this once." "But this is a laisser-passer," I said, "for the whole of the department of the Alpes Maritimes, and for the whole of August ! Look at it. There you see as large as life ' Alpes Mari- times, August'!" "Hum, oh, huh, what!" ex- IN FRANCE 65 claimed the aged functionary, "to be sure, you are right ! A thousand pardons, my dear sir ; a thou- sand pardons. You are entirely in the right, and I am entirely in the wrong. How very singular. Pardon me ! Good evening ! " And the old gentleman took himself off to a bench outside the octroi building, looking disconsolate, for I fancy this must have been the first time that he had attempted to exercise his important official func- tions, and after so unfortunate an experience he may never have either the vitality or the enterprise to try again. According to a telegram displayed at the Eclaireur, the Chinese have disarmed the Vaterland (a German gunboat). The Chinese to have dis- armed the Vaterland! This is the Yellow Peril right on us. What a humiliation for Germany ! Oddly enough, no one in Nice seems to catch on to the bitter irony and delightful humour contained in this announcement. Dr. A has arranged for G to receive from the military stores and -without payment ten tins of essence (petrol) every day for his car. So G will now be satisfied, I hope. Dr. A , while he was sitting with us, was informed by another military surgeon that orders had come in to the hospital transferring him to Toulon. He must leave to-morrow. Dr. A seemed disappointed, as well he may be, just at the moment that he has got his hospital into fair working order, to have to quit it. However, the unquestioning obedience exacted by the Army, he remarked, has this advan- tage ; it relieves one of all responsibility. He seems to think that there is a certain danger of typhus E 66 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT breaking out before long. The antityphic vaccina- tion requires a month, so it is too late to think of that now for those who have not undergone it, but he believes that quite a large proportion of the troops who were in active service when the war broke out have been inoculated. Aug. 18th. — I received a letter from L , who is serving as secretary to the treasurer in the regiment of . I had very little hope of ever hearing from him again, for I thought that his was one of the regiments that have been fighting round Mulhouse. But it appears that they are not going to the front for a few days yet, and are at present at Fontenay-sur-Bois, close to Paris. He says that the soldier gets just enough food to keep body and soul together, but he is full of enthusiasm at the prospect of "fighting side by side with our great friends the English, who, thanks to their powerful aid, will assure us certain victory." He adds, further on: "What you said in your last letter encouraged me very much, and I shall start for the frontier, proud to fight beside our allies the Eng- lish, and hoping that soon the tricolour flag will float anew over Alsace Lorraine, and that Germany will be reduced to dust." I have bidden him return covered with glory and German blood, with several batons of Prussian marshals in his knapsack, in place of the French one, which has been suppressed, but with any equivalent to it that may be obtainable, to add to the others. Poor chap ! How many of them will not come back ! What a wicked, cruel thing the whole business is ! IN FRANCE 67 Aug. igth. — The Eclaireur came out this morn- ing with a story about the English having lost sixteen first-class battleships in a fight with the German fleet in the North Sea, including the Iron Duke, the Lion, the Bellerophon, the Albion, the Orion and the Superb. The Stefani Agency in Italy is responsible for the news. The Eclaireur ought to know that Stefani and Wolff are sister organisations, and both quite unreliable at such a moment as this, and to spread such a very fishy report over the whole of the front page is to nega- tive the principle they themselves laid down when the story of the destruction of German destroyers was launched, not to encourage wild "canards." Meat, of the best quality, is now 4s. a pound ; there is no rice to be had, and no milk for general consumption. Only the poor people with babies to feed can get milk, which is distributed on the presentation of tickets at the Mairie. The Countess' son, Roger, has written an urgent letter asking her authorisation (which is necessary) to be allowed to join the army as soon as he is eighteen, which will be on the 3rd of next month. He says that the time he serves now during the war will count double for the usual military service, and that he will not, any more than the other recruits, be sent to the front, but to Algeria to man the forts there in the absence of the trained troops. The Countess has asked my advice in the matter, and under the circumstances I see no reason why she should not grant the young man's request. He says in his letter, speaking of the Germans, "On va leur passer la piquette, et la bonne!" This, it appears, is a Lyonnese expression, piquette 68 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT being the thin wine produced by the second press- ing, which one only offers to an enemy against whom one has a very special grudge, in the hope that it may effectually "do" for him, as, no doubt, it does. Aug. 20th. — With regard to the reported naval battle, the only authentic news, which comes from London, is that there has been an exchange of shots between British patrols and German cruisers recon- noitring, without result on either side, and there seems to be "a certain amount of effervescence in the North Sea." If all those ships, of which the Eclaireur gave the list, had been sent to the bottom, that would certainly have accounted for the effervescence. Aug. 21st. — The Pope is dead, and the Black Pope, the General of the Jesuits, has, by a curious coincidence, died almost at the same moment. Two more signs of the crumbling away of an epoch. One can be sure of this, that a great revolution is at hand, even in the Catholic Church. Clearly everything is going back into the melting-pot in view of the new era which is on the point of dawn- ing. Perhaps there will be a non-Italian Pope. The bells were tolled in all the Nice churches last night. There is a strong Catholic feeling in the population here, but in spite of this, the fact of the Pope's death, which would have created vast excite- ment in ordinary conditions at Nice, is quite over- shadowed by the war. If, as our friend de B maintains, this is a Jesuits' war, the coincidence of the Black Pope's death is even more striking. I visited the Soup Kitchen, presided over by IN FRANCE 69 Madame N , in the garage of the Hotel . They distribute 600 lunches and dinners every day (so they say), and the guests go away with baskets full of the food that is left over. All the children looked happy and healthy. The Hotel has furnished its salons as a hospital in tip-top style. The subaltern officers will be in a gallery, which is furnished luxuriously ; the field officers will each have a private room. The men's quarters are in a large saloon, now labelled "Ward Deroulede," which is beautifully neat and bright. All the bedding is that used for the hotel guests in the Nice season. -a FOURTH WEEK Aug. 22nd. — In fulfilment of my promise, I went to Madame N 's soup kitchen, but she was not there. I waited for her in the hall of the hotel in company of Madame C — • — , who frequently called out instructions to her servants, who were moving beds in the wards, that they were on no account to drag them, but to carry them. " Dragging a bed ruins it very quickly," she told me. A soldier came in to inquire whether a simple bandage could be put on the arm of a soldier of his regiment who had injured himself slightly. Dr. C replied that it was impossible, as nothing whatever was ready, not even the distilled water, which would be in- dispensable. As Madame N did not arrive, I put off photographing her soup distribution to another day, but at C 's request went to look at the poor people eating their soup. To my sur- prise (it was then 1 1 . 15) there were only about four or five families, perhaps fifteen people in all, and yesterday at 11.30 there had been none — all gone. It is comforting to think that the needy in Nice are not so numerous as was at first feared. It is announced that on Tuesday next 2,000 wounded will arrive at Nice ; so that all the hospitals will be full. Young R6ne" N has enlisted in a light infantry regiment, of which the depot is at Troyes, 70 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT 71 when he will proceed at once to join his battalion at Nancy. So the assurance from the Countess' son that untrained men are not being sent to the front is not apparently true. I presume that they will first get a preliminary training at Troyes, but there is no more talk of their being, whether they like it or not, drafted to Algeria. They have the choice, and naturally they choose to be sent to the front. On my way back to lunch I met Ren£ N looking rather disconsolate. He had been unable to get his marching orders for the train that leaves at 2.30 in the afternoon, and can therefore only get away by the train starting at 2.30 in the morn- ing. This will prevent him from stopping on the way in Paris. The reason is that having been convoked to the Military Head-quarters at nine this morning, he failed to turn up before n.30, and found in consequence that seventeen other recruits had been able to get ahead of him. He was going off to the Mairie to see whether he could not arrange matters. A typical specimen this of military punc- tuality as understood in the "Midi." Aug. 23rd. — We wake to the sound of the bugle, the tramp of marching feet, the hoarse words of command, all the sounds of a camp in full activity. This is, in fact, what Nice now is, and nothing else — an armed camp. The unwonted crowds, the military display, the music and banners have made the quite small children think that Carnival has come back again, and they have begun to shout out that horrible "air du Carnival," with its sing-song refrain, which went near to driving us all mad last 72 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT spring. I had been told when I first came here that the Nicois look at everything through Carnivalesque spectacles, and that the smallest public excitement is an excuse for them to parade the streets with a false nose. The children are certainly affected in this way. None the less the butcher whose shop is on the ground floor of my house is now lying at Carcassonne with a bullet in his belly, and the horrors of war are creeping closer to us. To- morrow or Tuesday, so I hear from the chief surgeon of the Military Hospital at the Hotel Majestic, 2,500 wounded are expected here (not 2,000, as I was first told). There is no longer any doubt that the army ultimately victorious, but momentarily surprised, at Mulhouse and the army which has had to retreat from Lorraine were both badly cut up, though not to the extent that the German reports say. But if the Nicois do not join with some of their children in taking a masquerade view of the war, they cannot get rid of their old habit, transmitted to them through so many generations, of treating every stranger — and here every one not a Nicois born is called a stranger — as lawful prey to be victimised and pitilessly fleeced, just as if he were an ordinary English milord of the Victorian Era or a modern American millionaire. From the application of this system the soldiers who have been drafted into the town are not exempted. The complaint now being made is that the Nicois butchers are responsible for the recent excessive rise in the price of meat. The Eclaireur calls upon the military authorities to put a stop to this dis- graceful state of affairs by taxing meat as they IN FRANCE 78 have already taxed bread, but hints that the butchers have a municipal pull which will probably prevent anything from being done. "Everybody knows," says the Eclaireur (I didn't), "that the butchers have purchased cattle in the mountains for mere nominal prices, and that they have thus despoiled the peasant breeders by means of intimidation, scaring them into the belief that they were invested with military authority. These butchers actually realised a profit of 400 per cent, on the purchase of the cattle, realised in conditions which constitute a swindle and a usurpation of power. It is scan- dalous that political personages should try, at this moment, to cover these butchers with their protec- tion, and to hinder criminal proceedings which it is the duty of Justice to bring against them. These carrion birds who have settled upon our populations deserve to be condemned to penal servitude for life." And the Eclaireur promises to lay bare the scandals, to stifle which an attempt is being made in high places. For my own part, after the mutton chop which I eat yesterday, which cost fifty centimes and con- tained exactly one small mouthful of meat, I have made up my mind to lead the fruitarian and vege- tarian existence until brighter days dawn. The weather is still hot enough (though now there is a distinct autumnal feel in the air) to make meat rather unappetising than otherwise. But why does not the Eclaireur start a strike of consumers, who would boycott these culpable butchers for a week or two, as was successfully done some years ago in the United States? I will suggest this to-night to Georges Maurevert, who, by the way, must be 74 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT congratulated on his great success with the anti- absinthe campaign. It was he who suggested the suppression of its sale here to the commanding general, whose order to that effect has now been imitated throughout the whole of France, including Paris, if you please ! This is indeed a feather in his cap ; in fact, it is one of the most curious outcomes, so far, of our state of warfare, for the daily consump- tion of this potent poison throughout the entire country was something fantastic. Another grumble against the native Nicois is that they are callous and close-fisted, and have con- tributed relatively little to the funds raised for deal- ing with popular distress. The Countess tells me of a wealthy house-owner whom she knows, a Nicois, M. D , son of a former governor of Nice, who resides in his own house, and whose concierge's son recently departed for the front. The youth rang at the owner's flat, with the dutiful intention of bidding him good-bye, and was ad- mitted by a thoughtless housemaid. M. D was furious with her afterwards. " I was morally obliged to tip the young man a louis," he declared in a paroxysm of rage. "If you had had the common sense to tell him I was out, that louis would have been saved ! " A more comic instance is furnished by M. B , the proprietor of the C , a well-known Nicois restaurant here which does a large business all the year round, and espe- cially in the season. At the request of M. B , the proprietor, the Eclaireur announces in its daily list of "Jolis Gestes" (Handsome Actions) that, as he is now serving with his regiment, he has contributed to the fund for feeding the necessitous IN FRANCE 75 poor of Nice the sum of 12 fr. 50 centimes, which represents his soldiers' pay during the five days since he joined the colours ! I am sure that there must be many exceptions, but the reputation of avarice is very generally attributed to the Nicois. They are apparently incapable of the warm-hearted outbursts to which the Italians are so easily aroused. Nor do they appreciate this in the Italians, even when they themselves are the chief or the sole beneficiaries of such generous movements. In the present crisis the Italians of Nice have come forward in a very noble way, volunteering in hun- dreds to join the French Army. And the French military authorities have been glad and proud to have them, as well they may be, for you only have to see these young Italians marching along the Avenue de la Gare on their way to the station after they have enrolled to recognise at once that they are fine, disciplined, well-trained troops, who will give a very good account of themselves. They march by with a light, springy step, in perfect line and in perfect silence. They are, of course, for the present in plain clothes, but they have with them their own chosen sergeants, who direct them with a sharp, low word of command, and are only distinguished from the rest by a band with the Italian colours on their arms. And not the slightest notice do the Nicois take of them. Not a shout of encouragement, not a handshake or a handclap do they get. They don't look as if they expected it or wanted it. They are going to serve a larger France, which will appreciate their devotion and sacrifice at the true value. The Nicois, who hate the Italians cordially, are only too glad at heart 76 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT to see them depart, and are, so I am told, already arranging to step as soon as possible into their shoes. So, dawdling along the avenues with that look of acid self-sufficiency and comic portentous- ness which characterises the typical Nicois, they pretend to be wholly unaware even of the existence of these heroic young Italian volunteers. In the evening de B introduced an elderly gentleman named R , a barrister, whose wife is an Alsatian, and who knows Alsace and Lorraine from the inside, having at one time resided at Nancy, and being in constant touch with his wife's Alsatian relatives. Two of her nephews are officers in the Prussian Army, and, according to R , neither of them can speak a word of any other language than German. In spite of the passionate opposition of de B , R maintained that, apart from Alsatians living in France, the Alsatians of the old school who were born before the war, and a handful of "intellectuels " who are opposed to Germany on political or religious grounds, Alsace is now heart and soul German. He cited the case of two of his wife's first cousins, both of whom have been conscripts in the Prussian Army. Neither of them can speak French. The elder still professes a sort of sentimental affection for France, "but the other, Karl, is," said M. R , "a perfect little demon. I was stopping a short time ago with my wife for a few days in their parents' house in Alsace, and after lunch Karl told me that he pos- sessed a sacred relic which he particularly wished me to see. So I went with him into his bedroom, and there under a glass globe, such as in peasants' cottages you will see covering a little bunch of IN FRANCE 77 orange blossoms in souvenir of a wedding, there was an epaulette ! ' What on earth is this ? ' I exclaimed. ' The most precious and sacred thing that I possess in the world,' replied Karl. 'That epaulette has been touched by the Kaiser's own hand. Yes, the Kaiser! When I was serving my military time in Berlin, the Emperor, during a review, passing along the line of the regiment, asked me some question of no consequence, and as he did so placed his hand upon my epaulette. As soon as I got back to barracks I tore off the epaulette and swore that no human hand should ever touch it again, and I would keep it all my life long as a sacred relic. I have done so, as you see ! The Kaiser, the Kaiser ! to have put his own Imperial hand on my epaulette ! Can you conceive any greater honour than that?' 'Oh, nonsense,' I replied; 'you, an Alsatian, you ought to be ashamed of yourself,' and I made as if I would snatch the rubbishing thing away from under the glass globe to destroy it. I am sure he would have strangled me if I had. Now Karl's grand- mother is an old lady who, if she goes into a shop in Alsace and a single word of German is spoken to her, instantly turns her back and walks into the street." R related other anecdotes equally characteristic, and tending to show that the third, that is the present, generation of Alsatians, born since the war, has, mainly owing, he thinks, to the strenuous instruction of the German schoolmaster, become absolutely germanised. Whether this is so or not has only a partial bearing on the war, for the French are not fighting Germany for the recovery of Alsace Lorraine except as a subsidiary 78 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT issue, and (he English and the Russians not at all, but it confirms what I have long believed and fre- quently expressed as my "belief : the Alsatians do not really want to become French, for modern France is not the France of their "Souvenir"; at most they would be willing to accept an autonomy. G. N confirmed in some measure from his own knowledge R 's views. He has just returned from spending a few weeks at the College of Athletes, conducted by Lieutenant Hebert, at Reims. There he met two Alsatians, and they told him that the general opinion in Alsace was that France was inferior in strength to Germany, that Germany would always beat her, and that it was useless to continue any longer the struggle for a hopelessly lost cause. Both these Alsatians occupied high official positions under the German Government. One clear fact seemed to be estab- lished : that the Alsatians, who, after all, are Germans, and never spoke French, except badly, are ceasing now to speak it at all. Aug. 24th. — Yesterday and to-day were perfect for weather — not too hot, with a deep blue, almost velvety sky, and an azure sea, serene and peaceful like a deep thought. But the mental tension is acute everywhere ; some people tell me that they are beginning to find it difficult to sleep. The news we get, though meagre, is frank enough, and all day long it is scanned and twisted and interpreted in every conceivable sense, in the hope of making more out of it and forming some kind of positive opinion, though in vain. But then there is nothing else to do ! Not a few of us are reaching that dangerous stage, which I had to warn the Countess IN FRANCE 79 against, of giving entire credence to two contradic- tory stories. All we know for certain is that the first great battle has begun. The Italian papers, which reach us through Vintimille more quickly than the Parisian papers, and are not subject to censorship, have very little to tell us more than we know, and much that they print is obviously untrue. But they are amusing. Those of us who imagined that they could not read Italian are discovering that with the help of a quite easy process of guesswork, backed up by a devouring curiosity, the Italian newspapers quickly yield up their secrets. In the caf£s what one man's powers of analogy as between French and Italian are unable to solve is submitted to the man sitting next to him, and generally with success, though sometimes a whole restaurant is held up by one word, as was the case last night at Ghis' with "sisto," which finally had to be sub- mitted to the kitchenmaid, who happened to be an Italian. Some of the Italian expressions rouse our ignorant hilarity. For instance, in yesterday's Secolo there was a translation of the Emperor of Germany's telegram to his daughter the Duchess of Brunswick (nee Cumberland), announcing his great victory ( ?) in Lorraine. In the Italian it runs: "II Signore Iddio ha benedetto le nostre valoroso truppe e ci ha accordata la vittoria." That "le sieur Idiot" (Mr. Idiot, for that is what it sounds like in French) should, according to the Kaiser, "have blessed his most valorous troops and accorded them the victory " struck the Frenchmen as irresistibly funny. The outcry raised in the Eclaireur against the 80 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT artificial rise in price of meat has had an immediate effect. Both the prefect and the mayor have issued explanatory and even apologetic letters, and certain of the worst offenders are to be prosecuted. One wholesale butcher, it appears, scoured the neigh- bouring mountains in a motor-car, accompanied by a gunner in uniform, and bamboozled the farmers into believing that he was empowered by the mili- tary authorities to buy their cattle at the requisition price, which left him, of course, a big profit over the market price. Others contented themselves with getting ahead of the foraging parties, and inducing the farmers to sell at 50 per cent, less than the normal price, on the ground that the military authorities who were in their wake would insist upon a still further reduction of 25 per cent. The retail butchers are hardly less to blame than the wholesale butchers, for when the Army ceded 200 head of cattle to the municipality to be retailed at normal prices in municipal shops, whereby the artificial rise would have been prevented, the butchers combined (the mayor says) to prevent the animals from being slaughtered, so they had to be given back. What "riles" us additionally is to read in the last Temps which has reached us from Paris, dated the 23rd, that retail prices in Paris have all gone down, including that of meat, which is lower now than it was before the war, and that the fall is likely to go on increasing for at least another month. The explanation given by the market people is that, exportation having ceased, there is a glut of all kinds of food-stuffs in Paris. The only exception is ham, upon which a rush was made by panic-stricken housewives at the beginning IN FRANCE 81 of the war. (Here there has been no rise in the price of ham.) Fruit and vegetables have been exceptionally plentiful all over France, and there has been no real difficulty in getting in any of the crops, for in the entire population only one person in nine has been absorbed by the mobilisation. The only possible danger ahead is that prices will fall so low that it will no longer pay the producer to send his goods to market. Aug. 25th — The brutal fact to-day, which the Government quite frankly admits, is that the allied troops have been beaten in the first great battle. They have been obliged to retire under the cover of the forts that line the French frontier, and the war is now being waged in the conditions which would have existed if the Belgians had made no resistance, with this difference, however, that the Germans have been much exhausted by three weeks' unexpected fighting. In the house here there are one or two typical Meridionals, who are already beginning to exaggerate this first defeat into a complete collapse of the French Army. These are the sort of people whose facility for being panic- struck caused the "regrettable incident" which took place a couple of days ago in Lorraine, when a portion of the 15th Corps bolted. The 15th Corps is recruited from the regions between and including Nice and Marseilles, so that the sensation the inci- dent has roused here can be imagined. N introduced a captain in uniform whom we met in the street last night, who turned out to be Georges Leygues, the ex-minister, and one of the chief legatees with Gaston Calmette of old 82 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT - Chauchard, the late proprietor of the Magasins du Louvre. When he had gone N told me that a deputation of Italians had called that morning on the Mayor of Nice to express their sympathy with France, and their willingness to do all they could to help her. They had imagined that as the Mayor is a general and an ex-Minister of War, and has a brother who is a general in the Italian Army, he would have been touched by this demonstration, and would have found something very pretty to say in reply. But, to their horror and amazement, all he had to tell them was that in his experience the Italians were "fine weather friends," very pleased to be with you if they thought you were going to win, but ready to jump at your throat the moment you looked like losing. This, of course, expresses compactly enough the native Nice feeling towards the Italians. N , informed of what had hap- pened, brought up Leygues to the rescue, who made the sore-headed Italians one of those insinuat- ing speeches for which he is famous (it was his talent as an after-dinner speaker which had induced Chauchard to put him in his will), and not only comforted them, but roused them to a wild pitch of enthusiasm. So all is well that ends well. These brave little Italians, by the way, while awaiting their incorporation as volunteers, are training themselves to march. Every day they start out on long marches in detachments, doing twenty kilometres in the morning and twenty in the evening. Among the countless atrocities and violations of the rules of war attributed, apparently on good evidence, to the Germans, there is one which IN FRANCE 88 deserves special notice ; it is the detention of 50,000 Russian subjects in Eastern Prussia, who are to be employed in getting in the crops. These, of course, are the Poles, to whom I have already referred in this journal. The rapid march of the invading Russians into Prussia is soon likely to put a stop to this. Two million men are marching on Berlin, and, as our English German friend with the Ameri- can accent said at the beginning of the mobilisa- tion, "Who can withstand them?" A Russian who lives at Beaulieu, and is often singularly well- informed about events in Russia, described to us to-day the peculiarities of the Russian onward march. "When a comrade falls," he said, "we Rus- sians pay no attention to him. We just close up the ranks and go on — on and on till we get there. We start two millions, and perhaps we drop a million on the way. We don't care; we can afford it. We are a million when we get there, and that is enough for our purpose. And as we go, we burn, slaughter and devastate everything in our path. We are all Cossacks in war time. No quarter, no mercy, kill, kill, kill; we spare neither sex nor age. And when the Russian soldier dies, his last words are always the same : ' For Czar and country ! ' " The Russian may have been in- dulging in a little mild exaggeration (we are in the Midi), but there is not much doubt that the invasion of Prussia will not be what the French War Minister recently deprecated, "une guerre en dentelle " (a war in kid gloves), and the Prussians may have cause to regret bitterly that by setting an example of barbarity they can no longer look 84 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT -~ for any pity from the civilised world should the same treatment be meted out to them. Aug. 26th. — In spite of the bad news, there are no signs of depression on the faces of the people one meets in the street. This may, of course, be partially due to our being at so great a distance from the theatre of war. On the other hand, the satisfactory reports of Russian successes in Prussia are inspiriting. Let us hope that they are true. Madame N tells me she was in tears all day yesterday. I have tried to make it clear to her that Germany cannot be demolished in a day. I took the Countess with me this afternoon to Monte Carlo. We went by train and came back by tram. A very silly little soldier in spectacles was at the entrance to the railway station, with a fixed bayonet, examining the laisser-passers, and look- ing amorously at every woman who passed in front of him. He told me that with my pass I could not go to Cannes, a statement which was unnecessary, as I had told him already that I was going in the opposite direction, and it was also untrue. A Sabbatarian calm of the deepest reigns over Monte Carlo. A few odd people are seated in the square opposite the Casino, which is closed, looking as if they were waiting for it to open. The streets are exquisitely quiet; such a relief after the noise of Nice ! We sat at the Cafe" de Paris, which is only half closed, and drank their best beer at thirty centimes a glass (cheaper than in Nice), and the haughty waiter seemed delighted with a ten-centime pourboire. There were two Americans sitting out- side, who looked like temporary fixtures ; I suppose IN FRANCE 85 they are "marooned" here, like so many of their compatriots on the Continent, particularly in Swit- zerland. Later on, at a little place close to the Credit Lyonnais (closed), the Countess had an ice, far better than any ice to be had in Nice (where there is still very little milk), and paid thirty cen- times for that too. I suppose there still are things in Monte Carlo which cost more than thirty cen- times, but it does not look as if there were. What a delightful place Monte Carlo would be if only they would suppress the Casino. The officials of the Casino, driven out of their own "hell" by the heat, and enjoying their forced vacation, were seated on chairs outside the building, fanning themselves. Most of them have been enrolled as special con- stables, and wear an arm-band in token of it. My old friend D , whom I found in his office in the upper part of the Casino, now fittingly reached through an evil-smelling lavatory, has one of these arm-bands, and I punched him playfully on the chest for the pleasure of assaulting "an agent of the Public Force." Such is the ridiculous "cult" that the French have for the police that D was half inclined to treat the matter seriously. He belongs to the old type of pre-'yo Frenchmen, witty and gay, but full of pretension and lies and bagout, and if, as is very likely, the Germans think that they still have this same Frenchman to deal with and none other, their excessive assurance is not to be wondered at. But the type belongs to the era that is crumbling away, and has left few, if any, descendants of the same kidney. To him came in his chief, L , a more refined specimen of the Frenchman alogether, but with a touch of the 86 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT casino tarbrush about him too. He told us that the Recruiting Department is showing itself very particular as to the men it takes. One of his friends was rejected for short-sightedness, though he is as strong as a bull, and spends all the time he can shooting. Another volunteer, who is a linguist and highly educated, has been invested with the duties of regimental barber ! L 's brother, the well- known humorist, has gone to the front. Notices are posted all over Monte Carlo signed by the Prince, and informing the "Austro-Ger- mans" politely and regretfully that he is under the painful necessity of expelling them within forty- eight hours after the first day of the French mobi- lisation. They were among his most assiduous customers, so that his regret can be understood. While we were waiting for the tram we sat on a bench on the deserted terrace overlooking the sea, and enjoyed the delicious and to us unwonted calm. The sea was like a sheet of azure satin, veiled on the horizon and along the coast of Bordighera in a silver mist. The Countess said she felt she could sleep there without moving from the bench for a whole week. Peace and War ! What a contrast ! The way back along the coast is patched by the red and blue of the soldiers bivouacking under the olive trees and in the gardens of the deserted villas. And there, too, what a contrast ! All those luxuri- ous palaces and villas and hotels, looking very gloomy now, and stricken dumb, as it were, forming background to the coarse and savage but pic- turesque paraphernalia of war. Cap d'Ail, Eze, Beaulieu are links in the chain of the long, strag- gling camp which extends from Monaco to Nice, IN FRANCE 87 a fusty, dusty, straw-littered and tentless camp, with its thousands of perspiring, red-faced men and hundreds of plunging mules, all munching and swilling together — making a huge and for the time being merry-souled picnic. Many of these men think that they are there to guard a frontier which is in no danger of attack, so long as Italy remains neutral, and are, therefore, on velvet as compared with their comrades at the front. This is true, but they may not stop long where they are. So com- plete is the understanding between Italy and France that on both sides of the frontier the forts are being dismantled. This has been told me on what I am bound to consider as unimpeachable authority. The Italians are hurrying their big guns to the Austrian frontier, and the French are sending theirs north. So before long not even a pretence will be made of guarding these Alpine passes. G seems to be losing his enthusiasm for bone- collecting. He says that the soup-kitchens already have a surplus of 40,000 francs, which they do not know how to spend, that they are run by people whose main object is self-advertisement, and that very little of the money subscribed will reach the pockets of the poor. What seems to be the case is that now that the Italians have nearly all left Nice there are very few really necessitous people left to be dealt with. There is also this criticism to be made on the soup-kitchen. The soup supplied is not sufficiently nourishing. The Nicois is accustomed to a soup that he can stick his spoon upright in. G says that some of the poor people brought a newspaper to carry the soup away in ! 88 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT Aug. 2jth. — I have received a letter from L- W , whose regiment ( ), is still at He seems rather depressed. To encourage him I have written as follows — "Votre bonne et affectueuse lettre m'a fait beau- coup de plaisir. Surtout, je constate avec admira- tion le sublime courage que vous montrez en face de toutes les eventualites de cette atroce lutte. Mais ce n'est que ce que j'aurais toujours attendu du bon petit Francais, plein de cceur, de vaillance, et de fierte, que je connais en vous. Maintenant, si c'est votre destin comme vous le dites de ne pas revenir, je ne puis imaginer une fin de vie (de cette vie qui doit finir forcement) plus belle et plus glorieuse, plus a convoiter, que de mourir en se battant pour la patrie, et non seulement pour la patrie, mais pour la liberte et la civilisation de tout un monde, contre la barbaric Qu'un francais ou un anglais se batte pour son pays, c'est beau, et c'est naturel, mais le drapeau sous lequel vous vous etes range est plus vaste encore que le drapeau national, c'est celui de la Beaut£ et de la Bonte\ de tous les principes pr6- cieux qu'un honnete homme porte dans son cceur, c'est le drapeau du Dieu du Bien en prise avec le Demon du Mai, c'est le drapeau que tenait Jeanne d'Arc, et l'arm^e sur laquelle il flotte est sacree et sainte comme elle fut. . . . Je trouve que les nou- velles de la frontiere beige sont tres satisfaisantes. N'ayez pas peur; avec la France, la Russie, le Japon, et l'Empire Britannique sur son dos, l'Alle- magne est sure de son affaire. Evidemment ce n'est pas au theatre que cela se passe; la mise en scene et l'enchainement des actes ne sont pas regies IN FRANCE 89 par un souffleur; et pour les spectateurs impatients d'aller souper, il est possible que Taction trainera un peu en longeur. Nous n'avons pas a nous pre- occuper de ces farceurs-la, qui rapportent tout a la satisfaction de leurs emotions personnelles. Nous tiendrons bon ; nous nous battrons au besoin jusqu'a a notre dernier homme, et nous depenserons jusqu'a a notre dernier £cu ; mais soyez sur que longtemps avant que ces £ventualites se presenteront, l'Alle- magne sera sur le flanc." For those who, like myself, are for the present stay-at-homes from the theatre of war, I am con- vinced that there is a useful work in seizing every occasion that presents itself of writing encouraging letters to friends at the front. These letters do a great deal more good than one imagines. They encourage their recipients much more than their inspiration or style would seem to justify. Make them personal, and above all long, the longer the better, and write frequently. Every word is eagerly devoured, and the letters are read over and over again. The magnetic contact established by a letter galvanises into cheerfulness and self-con- fidence the absent and solitary soldier (every soldier is solitary — alone with his souvenirs and his thoughts), however despondent he may have been a moment before. And be as positive about success- ful results as if you were penning the advertisement of a quack medicine. For human nature needs that. I remember years ago when my friend Aubrey Stan- hope of the New York Herald undertook the boldest task ever attempted by a newspaper correspondent, within the limits of my knowledge at any rate, 90 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT namely to get himself inoculated with Haffkine's anti-cholera serum at the Pasteur Institute, and then go and nurse the cholera patients in the hospital at Hamburg, he appointed me in a kind of a way his general executor, should anything happen to him. I wrote him a letter timed to reach him just as he had entered the hospital and begun his heroic duties. I wound up by saying, "I have a very clear intuition that you will come out all right," and then the inspiration came to me to add (what I must now confess to have been entirely untrue, "and it is a very curious thing that when I have an intuition as clear as this, I have never known it once to be wrong." (Heaven forgive me !) Well, the curious thing is that Stanhope, when he came out of his ordeal safe and sound, and we met again in Paris, reminded me of this phrase in my letter, which I had forgotten all about, and said : "You have no idea what courage that gave me. It seemed to burn itself into my brain, repeating itself to me over and over again like an obsession. I had moments of great moral and physical prostration, for I was full of microbes, good and bad ones, fighting for the possession of me; and then the scenes and experiences I went through were awful, too awful even to be described ; but those words of yours, the absurdity of which I now recognise, ' and my intuitions always come true,' seemed to shine out in the darkness, and filled me with hope and energy every time I thought of them." There, if you please, was a falsehood worth the telling, and one to be proud of, as the teller thereof indeed is. Let me add this : when you have penned your vibrating letter, always enclose with it a post office IN FRANCE 91 order, no matter for how small a sum ; it will be welcome, especially if the addressee happens to be a millionaire, for those people are always hard up. And remember that in war time the post-office orders in France sent to soldiers at the front pay no fee, and the letters do not require to be stamped. There is now a good deal of pessimism abroad. This is certainly due to the ministerial changes that have taken place in Paris. Some curious reasons are given for the sudden and rough "disembark- ment " of the Minister of War. According to N , who is in close touch with the Government, Messimy was an insignificant politician who thought that because he was a "reserve " captain on the general staff he knew all about war. Then there is the very shocking fact that he authorised to be published in a Paris paper over the signature of Senator Gervais a statement accusing of temperamental cowardice and military inefficiency the entire population of Provence. Also the official communications to the Press from the Ministry of War, for which he has been responsible, have been written in such a muddled and embarrassed style as to cause much perturbation. It is easy to imagine that in the country which produced Massena and Garibaldi, Senator Gervais' imputations against the Southerners have roused a storm of indignation. The Senator (this is very typical of the modern French professional poli- tician) now withdraws them. But the mischief has been done. What, of course, is almost inconceiv- able is that the ex-Minister of War should be found out to have been hand-in-glove with a discredited and unscrupulous paper, and that in complicity 92 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT with this sheet he should have allowed to appear a gross libel upon a whole section of the French army, and this within a month of the commencement of hostilities ! Germany alone could profit, and profit hugely, and must have profited from such an abominable attack. One has to rub one's eyes and pinch oneself to be assured that one is not asleep and dreaming ! What, it is the Minister of War, who had the power to stop it, who is responsible for everything that appears in the Paris papers con- cerning the military operations, who is invested with absolutely discretionary powers, who author- ised the publication of Senator Gervais' letter ! Senator Gervais is a legislator of tenth-rate standing, with a vague claim to be considered a military expert on the ground of having been at one time parliamentary reporter of the Military Budget. His reputation for patriotism or disinterestedness has not precisely gone up. Still, he was expressing an individual opinion. But that the Minister of War should have allowed this, should stand by and assent, while a notoriously slandering sheet blackens and befouls under the eyes of the enemy, and on the morrow of a serious check, a section of the army which represents one-sixth of the entire fighting strength of France. This from the Minister of War! To-night at the Cafe T the little circle which I occasionally join there, which we call the "Committee of Nations," consisting of the Marquis de B (a Spaniard), the Marquis de F (an Italian), Comte des G (a Frenchman), a former cavalry officer, Georges N , and an amusing but paradoxical barrister named R , was considering the incident from the point of view IN FRANCE 93 of the sensation it would have created had it taken place in one of the allied countries, say England. The public, it is certain, have become so accustomed for many years to political scandals in France, that they can no longer gauge their comparative importance. But it would undoubtedly have been very strange and startling if Lord Kitchener had, within a month of the opening of hostilities, inspired the Cabinet to bundle him unceremoni- ously out of his post as Minister of War, because he had deliberately authorised to appear in a paper of mean reputation, and this in spite of a most stringent censorship on all other papers, a general charge of cowardice against an entire race, forming part of the British nation— the Irish, for instance, or the Scotch. Yet that would be on all fours with what has happened here. It is only too clear also that when the story reaches the soldiers at the front, worn out with six days' fighting, which has not been so far altogether in their favour, it will not do them any good. It won't act as a pick-me-up. How- ever, I am disposed to think that it will not affect them very seriously for the reason 1 have already given : the French, and particularly the Parisians, are too much accustomed to these political "high- jinks" to care much about them. The troops seem to be holding their own. And on this point I was obliged to join issue with my friends of the Cafe" T , who certainly are, with the exception of His Spanish Grandeeship de B , a most inveterate band of croakers. They would have it to-night (and G. N is the most positive of all) that France is now definitely defeated and done for. I fail to see it myself. They assure me of the 94 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT existence of a wonderful siege mortar, the con- struction of which the Germans have made a secret of up till now, which will blow any fort, however modern its construction, into smithereens. They believe, in spite of official denials, that the enor- mously strong forts of Namur have been destroyed practically at sight, by this miraculous mortar. According to G. N this miracle can only be countered by another. It needs a miracle now to save France, the "lucky blow," as in a prize fight. (G. N , being handy with the gloves, and Maeterlinck's favourite boxing-partner, uses the technical English expressions of the ring with apt- ness.) He says that the fighter who is outclassed as regards science, strength and weight, merely wastes his strength, and wearies himself out by pommelling the ribs of his stronger, bigger, and more skilful adversary. If he cannot get in "the lucky blow," he is surely doomed to be beaten. However, in this case, it is not a fight between two unmatched champions, with the world as impartial spectators, but a general melee, and Germans and Austrians are two against four. Moreover, though I am not incredulous by nature — incredulity is a form of mental meanness which dries up one of Life's most pregnant sources of enjoyment — I am at present withholding my belief in the powers of that miraculous German mortar. The new Ministry comes forward as a coalition of all the parties in the Chamber, and the inclusion of Jules Guesde, the high priest of Collectivist Socialism, is intended as a guarantee to the Socialists that no reactionary coup d'etat is in IN FRANCE 95 contemplation. For the same reason M. Millerand, the lawyer, who has already done good work for the Army, resumes his former portfolio as Minister of War. It is one of the sad features of French political life, particularly at such a juncture as the present, that had a General been appointed Minister of War, the Radical and Socialist elements in Paris would have immediately jumped to the con- clusion that a Military Dictatorship was impending. And then the Dogs of Revolution might have been let loose. A curious explanation of the choice of Millerand as Minister of War was given me this morning by N , whose close and lengthy relations with Briand makes him of good counsel in such matters. "Millerand," he said, "is a lawyer. And owing to the practice that lawyers get from studying briefs at very short notice, they acquire a wonderful gift of assimilation. That is what is wanted now at the War Office — a man with experience and technical knowledge of the depart- ment, who has a quick and masterly grasp of situa- tions which involve a great complexity of details. Messimy was quite lacking in this quality. Millerand, on the other hand, is a genius at details, which largely accounts for his great success at the bar." On this theory Mr. Asquith might have re- mained at the British War Office. But I fancy a much truer explanation of Millerand's selection for the portfolio of war is the one that I have already given — the haunting fear of the danger of a Mili- tary Dictatorship, and of reviving the dead bones of Boulangism. Jules Guesde is a minister without a portfolio, for to have accepted any share in the executive of 96 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT a parliamentary government would have been, contrary to the Socialist principles from which he has never swerved. This was one of the moot- points upon which he and the late Jean Jaures were at loggerheads. Jean Jaures saw no objection to taking a hand in a bourgeois ministry had the offer ever been made to him, but not so Guesde, the dog- matic Pope of Collectivism, who maintained that the Social Revolution must come first. Certainly there is a striking contrast between Guesde's position now and what it was when I first made his acquaintance. It was in 1888 that Due Quercy, the leader of a group of so-called Independent Socialists, which, as far as I could see, was com- posed mainly of himself, took me to visit Guesde, then living in the Montsouris quarter of Paris, and in bed with influenza. His surroundings were visibly quite poverty-stricken. His furniture had just been taken away to be sold. His wife was suckling an anaemic-looking babe. Two little children were crying, apparently from hunger, in a corner, and the great Socialist chief himself was wearing a black night-gown, credit with the laundress having no doubt broken down, which enabled him to receive his disciples with dignity, and gave him at the same time a very priestly and even Rabbinical appearance, heightened in this last detail by his long black beard and flowing black locks, and strongly aquiline nose. After the visit I took Due Quercy off to lunch at the Restaurant SoufHet, where in those days the cooking was excellent (very different from what it is now), and he wept gently over the " Chateaubriand aux pommes " as he drew a mental comparison between its rich juicy slices IN FRANCE 97 sprinkled with chopped parsley and the state of destitution of Jules Guesde, but any offer of pecuniary help to the High Priest of Collectivism would, he declared, have bitterly offended him. And now Guesde is the ministerial colleague of Ribot, who at the extreme other end of the political scale — that most opposed to Collectivism, is just such another high priest of uncompromising social doctrine as himself. So in the parliamentary stock- pot, the war is already beginning to produce what the official despatches recently described as taking place in the North Sea, "a certain amount of effervescence." The Marquis de F who has proved himself on more than one occasion to be well-informed on Italian matters, said to-day that Italy would cer- tainly come to no decision as to whether or not she should break her present neutrality and join the Triple Entente until after the result is known of the Papal Conclave. He believed that Italy would declare war against Austria the moment that Lovcen, overlooking Cattaro, which is now besieged by the Austrians, were to fall into their hands. The possession by Austria of Lovcen would destroy the naval balance in the Adriatic. As the Anglo- French fleet is at present preventing the Austrians from taking Lovcen, the question presents itself whether it would not be more diplomatic to let them have it ! Aug. 28th. — As a set-off to the miraculous German siege-mortar, the Marquis de B related to-day on the authority of one of his officer friends that the French Ministry of War has quite recently G 98 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT sent for Turpin, the inventor of melinite, and asked him whether he could not suggest a new and more effective shell for field artillery than the one actu- ally in use in the French Army. Turpin promptly produced the specifications of a gyrostatic shell, which whirls round and round in the air in the course of its flight, spreading death in every direction. If there is time to manufacture it in sufficient quantity this shell is to be given a trial. The depression of yesterday seems to have lessened. The fears that were rampant that political complications in Paris were disorganising the defence of the country have quieted down so far as this part of France is concerned. The Com- mittee of Nations, sitting nightly at the Cafe T , has decided unanimously that if the French troops can maintain their defensive at the frontier, Germany is caught in a trap from which there is no escape. But all depends upon the question, Can they ? Obviously, the Germans do not include a general retreat as part of their plan of campaign. Their only possible chance lies in advancing. The goal of this advance is Paris; but the goal may turn out to be a mouse-trap. The 15th Corps has been, so we learn from certain officers, severely punished for its defection in Lorraine. Two hundred men have been shot by sentence of court-martial, and the rest were placed in the front line of fire for the next engagement, and told that if they turned tail, they would be mown down from behind. They are said, how- ever, to have completely recovered themselves, and to have behaved very well. The two regiments most to blame were the inth, whose d^pot is at IN FRANCE 99 Antibes, and the 58th, usually stationed at Avig- non. The Countess' nephew belongs to the 111th, and we are in ignorance of his fate. He is believed to have been transferred to the auxiliary service, in which case there is a chance that he is still at Antibes, but there is no news from him. FIFTH WEEK Aug. 29th. — Commenting on the poor show which the Provencal troops are accused of having made, the Countess, who has lived for many years in Nice and knows all the classes of society, says that the male population here prefers to live on its womenkind. In the household it is very generally the wife who is the bread-winner. Either she plies a trade of some kind or owns a shop, in which case all that the husband will do is to keep the books, and the rest of his time he will spend playing cards in a cafe. The Nicois is as lazy as the Nicoise is industrious. Even the great businesses of Nice have mostly been built up by women. The Nicoise, strangely enough, has a preference for marrying a Nicois, in spite of his eccentric character, and much of the hatred of foreigners which exists as a strong undercurrent of popular feeling in Nice is inspired by the women. The Nicois, on the other hand, openly expresses his contempt for the Nicoise, who, owing to her habits of hard work and drudgery, quickly loses any good looks she may once have possessed. Obviously with such morals as this, it is not to be expected that the native of the Riviera would make a very exemplary soldier. It must be understood, of course, that the Countess was dealing in generalities. I am sure that there must be many exceptions to her sweeping condemnation of the 100 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT 101 Nicois, but what she says I have heard others say. Nice is acquiring an unsavoury reputation as the one town in France which at this moment of national crisis has tried to make an illicit profit by artificially raising prices, and fraudulently reducing the value of goods supplied. The local authorities are accused of having condoned these unscrupulous practices, and both the Petit Nigois and the Eclair- eur make no bones about saying so. The price of bread has been taxed, but it has been fixed at a price considerably higher than that which prevails in other parts of France, where, however, the cost of labour and raw material are either no lower or higher. To-day I took my first bite out of the taxed loaf. It costs forty-five centimes the pound, five centimes less than when it was first taxed; but it is only half baked, and so full of water that at least a good ten per cent, must be deducted from the weight. It is almost uneatable, and though I have the digestion of an ostrich, it has given even me a slight stomach-ache. In fact, it is nothing more than underdone dough. The meat scandal still continues, in spite of the protests of the Press ; and to give an idea of the apathy of the authorities, a report was published to-day ostensibly in their defence, of the current investigations carried out during the past month by the Adulteration Depart- ment (Service des Fraudes), according to which out of seventeen samples of milk ten were found to be watered and skimmed, while of seven samples of tinned provisions five were found to be bad. Twenty-two analyses were made of the milk 102 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT furnished to the Infants' Protection Societies, the hospitals, and the Municipal Charity Departments, and only five gave satisfactory results ! The statistics, of which this is only a selection, all point to the same conclusion that systematic fraud is practised on the Nice consumer, by the purveyors, who apparently have a strong municipal and political pull, which secures them impunity. When I say that the article in the Petit Nigois giving the above statistices was published in defence of the prefectoral and municipal authorities, I should add that it is equally likely to have been an elabor- ate piece of irony due to the biting and humor- ous pen of my friend N ; but there is no doubt as to the accuracy of the figures, which are official. Two days ago the Mayor of Nice, General Goiran, placarded an address to the Nice shop- keepers, begging them not to raise their prices unduly, and threatening them (in a kind of half- frightened whisper) with serious consequences if they did. But the whole document was drawn up in a style of such abject servility that it is not likely to have the slightest effect. To "put the lid on," as they say in London, the Mayor has expressed the opinion that in this hot weather it is quite unnecessary to eat meat at all, which cuts the gordian knot of the whole question. But there seems to be no denial of alleged frauds attributed to the wholesale butchers. I am with the Mayor in principle as to the superiority of vegetables in this season, but when one remembers that not so long ago this slip-slop Mayor was French Minister of War — Mon Dieu ! Vive Haldane ! IN FRANCE 103 Aug. 30th. — I made up my mind to-day to leave for Paris to see what is going on. De B is of opinion that the failure of the French troops to force back the German advance can only be due to lack of ammunition, and I reminded him in joke of our americanised Anglo-German Jew friend's criticism of the French on the first day of the mobilisation, that the French never have more than two-pennyworth of anything in stock. For my benefit de B has prepared, with the information supplied by a French officer before the war broke out, the following statistics as to the reserve of ammunition in possession of the French in peace time. It is calculated that the 75m. gun fires 700 to 800 shots in an ordinary undecisive battle. There are 120 guns per army corps, and 25 army corps, which gives 3,000 guns. The ammunition reserve of the French Army contained 5,000 shells per gun, which for 3,000 guns makes 15,000,000 shells. Assuming on an approximate calculation that one-third of the guns in the entire French artillery have been in action from the commence- ment of the war, each firing 500 shots per day, that gives 500,000 shots per day, and on a calculation of 20 days' fighting, 10,000,000 shots must already have been expended out of the total of 15,000,000. The figures for the rifles show a total of 4,000,000 rifles in stock, with 400 cartridges for each rifle, a total of 3,600,000,000 cartridges. At the time that the Agadir incident broke out, France, accord- ing to de B , possessed only 800 shells for each 75m. gun, which was one of the reasons for her relative climb down before Germany. All of this, of course, is verv distressing, if it be true, but I 104 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT am helped to bear up against it, in some measure^. by the curious circumstance noted by de B on the same slip of paper on which he had jotted down the above figures that a clairvoyante, who had been consulted by his bonne, predicted the first decisive victory of the French for September nth. Let us mark that date. The peace negotiations which are to follow will, according to the same supernatural authority, be "very laborious and difficult." The latter part of the prophecy I think we all could have made. De F , who is certainly in touch with Italian official opinion, maintains that the French are wholly in the wrong if they imagine for a moment that the Italians will be actuated by sentimental motives in their attitude towards the war. The French, he said, have for many years seized every opportunity of placing obstacles in the way of Italy's political advancement, and pricking her with the proverbial pin. The Italians no longer owe any debt of gratitude towards France for any service the French Army may once have rendered to the cause of Italian freedom and unity, for that has long ago been amply paid for. It was ridiculous to suppose that the Italians were going to excite themselves over the bombardment and destruction of the artistic and architectural treasures of Louvain. The French describe this as an unexampled act of barbarity, which must necessarily rouse the utmost indignation of the Italians, who themselves have such a glorious, artistic past ; but they choose to forget that in 1849 they bombarded Rome, and from the archaeological and artistic points of view there can be no possible comparison between IN FRANCE 105 Louvain and Rome. Moreover, the Italians have not forgotten that the French were far from show- ing them any real or practical sympathy during the recent expedition to Tripoli. To this, of course, it can be replied that bom- bardments in 1849, with the projectiles then in use, were much less destructive as compared with what modern warfare achieves, and that if the Italians have not yet forgotten the French siege of Rome more than half a century ago, it is high time that they did forget it. But in point of fact I am per- fectly convinced from what I hear and see that Italian sympathy with France is really very great, especially among the middle classes of Italy, and this really does them credit in view of the almost universal dislike and distrust with which the Italians are treated by the French. Here in Nice whatever may happen to upset public equanimity is promptly attributed to "ces sales Italiens." Jealousy is the chief fault of the southern French, as it is of all people whose preference for talk causes them to frequently miss opportunities for fruitful action. While we were discussing these international questions at the Cafe R , Se , who is a typical southern French journalist of the old school, came up to the table where we were sitting, and squaring his arms on the table said, "Gentlemen, two good pieces of news, and hot from the prefec- ture, and therefore official." He detailed one. "And the other?" I asked. "Mais c'est celle-la." (It's that one.) Aug. 31st. — To Monte Carlo; this time with 106 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT G in his car, who was curious to sample the unruffled calm of the place, which is now a desert of dust under a constant blaze of sunlight. At the Cafe" de Paris they tried to make me accept five francs' worth of sous in exchange for a five-franc note. The waiter and the manageress both declared that there was no silver to be obtained in Monte Carlo, not even at the Hotel de Paris, on the other side of the square, to which they are annexed. A threat to publish the scandalous story far and wide produced two francs in silver from the waiter's private store. The doors of the Casino are opened again, but merely because one of the rooms has been lent to the Red Cross. Sept. ist. — The passport regulations affecting any one wishing to leave Nice are still rigorous, per- haps unnecessarily so, considering how very peace- able and free from any menace of attack is the department of the Alpes Maritimes. I ascertained at the Mairie to-day that my laisser-passer, or safe-conduct to Paris, could only be granted on the eve of my departure, and would have to be counter- signed, or rather counter-stamped, by the military authorities, who conveniently enough have an office on the upper floor of the building where the laisser-passer is issued. Nice to-day was decidedly depressed, for the first time, I think, since the war began. The rapid advance of the German troops towards Paris, and more particularly the absence of encouraging or even precise news from any part of the French lines at the front, made our military critics draw a IN FRANCE 107 long face. I still refused to recognise that there was any real cause for serious alarm, if only for the fact that the data required for any definite deduction are still lacking. My friends and col- leagues of the Committee of Nations were good enough to say that my departure would leave them without their habitual "consoler." "Vous nous manquerez ! " they said sadly. However, when I related to them, meaning no harm, that the lieu- tenant who had visaed my laisser-passer had inquired whether I was not afraid of Paris being besieged, and to my reply that Paris was in no such danger, had added, "not of being taken yet, perhaps," they were indignant. I had to explain that the lieutenant had only wanted to make polite conversation, or they would have insisted upon having him pilloried in the Nice Press. Sept. 2nd. — To my surprise I ascertained from the British Consul that my passport, dated 1884, is no longer valid. No passport may be more than five years old. The Consul, who was courtesy itself, and has hanging in his office a remarkably fine Monticelli, condoled with me for having to give up my old passport, and thus part company with a companion which has not left my pocket- book for just thirty years. These leave-takings, he remarked very justly, are often quite pathetic. He thought that I might have difficulty in getting into Paris, and very kindly went out of his way to draw out the passport so that I could leave to-night. My bag having been mislaid at the Nice station, I have decided to stop a day at Toulon for it to be 108 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT sent on. At Toulon I may still find some of my friends in the French Navy. I left Nice with the feeling that a moral revolu- tion is impending there as an outcome of the great war, as seems to be likely, indeed, all over Europe. At Monte Carlo I had the same feeling, and I should not be in the least surprised if one of the conditions of peace should be the suppression by international treaty of the gambling-hell which makes of the principality of Monaco the most dangerous plague-spot in the world, morally speak- ing. After all this shocking loss of human life, this life-and-death struggle between nations for the maintenance of all moral ideals, after the heroism and sacrifices on all sides, those whose business it will be to strike moral coherence once more out of the shattered remnants of society after the war is over, will surely take deep and serious counsel with their consciences. What the French call a "souffle," a gust of morality, will pass over the old world. Its standards of living and thinking must inevitably be raised. The Prince of Monaco was an intimate friend of the Kaiser. For long the best, or at any rate the most assiduous, customers of the gambling-rooms at Monte Carlo have been the German visitors. The expulsion of all the "Austro-Germans " on the second day of mobilisation from Monte Carlo must have been a blow to the Casino and to the Prince, but it showed once and for all that Monaco is really nothing more than an "annexe" of the French department of the Alpes Maritimes. The naked fraud of Albert Ill's sovereignty over Monaco has thus been exposed. Even to the degree of not IN FRANCE 109 selling absinthe, to conform to the order first issued on the subject by the General commanding the Entrenched Camp of Nice, inspired by our friend Georges Maurevert, and subsequently adopted all over France, the Sovereign of Monaco has been obliged to bend the knee. Even at the Cafe de Paris, absinthe was facetiously marked up at 1,000 frs. When this Holy War is over, will the French Government be able to keep up this farce of an independent principality of Monaco, solely for the purpose of veiling what would otherwise be an illegal gambling-hell ? I am convinced person- ally that neither France nor the French Government will have the wish to do so. Nice, too, will be none the worse for the moral shaking-up which the war is giving her. The municipal scandals in Nice, in connection with the price of food, do credit to neither her municipal nor her prefectoral administration. The tramways in Nice have been permitted ever since the outbreak of war to violate the conditions of their contract with the municipality, and, with no valid excuse at all, to make a large profit by suppressing their system of return tickets, as if the war necessitated that ! That is one glaring instance among many others. Toulon Sept. 3rd. — I took a room at the almost empty Hotel Victoria. A long tramway ride brought me to the Mourmillon quarter and the Rue Elisa, where D has his villa. Madame D showed me her baby, the most bland and blissful baby that I have ever seen, and a letter from her 110 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT husband, in which he speaks of his disgust, and that of all his brother officers, at being tied up with the rest of the Mediterranean fleet at Malta. The midshipmen have openly expressed their intention of exchanging, if possible, into line regiments, in order to get a brush with the enemy. D 's letter naturally does not give a very clear account of his movements, but it seems that at first the Mediterranean squadron, to which he belongs, after entering the Adriatic, was suddenly put to flight by the appearance of an Austrian submarine. Previous to this the Democratic, one of the largest French dreadnoughts, had collided with the Justice, an ironclad of the same type, causing her to leak so badly that she crippled the movement of the entire squadron, obliged to slow down to keep pace with her. Madame D quoted to me the remark made to her recently by a young French naval officer at Toulon, that the next war would be between France and England, for England would want to take possession of the entire German fleet, which would give her a naval preponderance to which France would not consent without a fight. Madame D expressed horror at the mere utterance of such an idea, but I saw nothing very extra- ordinary in it, and said so. England and France were never on worse terms than after the Crimean War, in which they had fought as allies. The same may happen again, though I do not think it will. Madame D 's father is Swedish Consul at Brest (a Frenchman, of course), and has official sources of information. Her mother has just written to her that shortly after the outbreak of the war a bodv of men and women in civilian dress IN FRANCE 111 were brought to Brest under a very strong guard and imprisoned. Madame D 's father subse- quently learned from the authorities that they were the entire telegraphic and postal staff at Nancy, who had accepted a bribe from the Germans to betray all the secrets of the French mobilisation which passed through their hands. Very likely the shooting of M. Samain 1 at Metz was due to their treachery, for if, as is highly probable, he had been in communication with France, they would have revealed the fact to the Germans. They are to be tried by court-martial. Madame D , like all the Frenchwomen I have met, is perfectly serene in her demeanour and outlook. She laughingly told me as I left that her husband's last words were : " I shall come back whole or not at all." The flight of the French Government to Bordeaux has produced no visible outward impression on the populace here. It is placarded in the windows of Le Petit Var, just opposite the hotel, and does not even attract a specially large crowd. Toulon is still the noisiest, and in outward appearance the most excitable town that I have ever had any experience of. The crying, or rather the shrieking, of the newspapers permitted here, but forbidden in all other big towns of France, combined with the ceaseless chatter of the popula- tion and the deafening din of the tramways, makes up such a volume of nerve-shattering noise, that one is constantly driven to take refuge on the quay, which is the only comparatively quiet and restful place to be found in Toulon ; and there the con- 1 M. Samain was not shot. 112 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT trast with the rest of the town is prodigious. The restaurants of Toulon are now all bad and dear. Nice is far better and more reasonable in this respect. Sept. 4th. — At dawn, that was about five o'clock, the entire population of Toulon was talking its hardiest and noisiest in the streets, though not apparently about the war more than any other topic. The landlady at the hotel, who insisted on talking English, said that the need for safe tele- graphic communication was the cause of the French Government's departure to Bordeaux, and she seemed quite undisturbed about it. The official news placarded at Le Petit Var was alarmingly vague ; it said practically nothing about the war ; announced the sudden resignation of the Prefect of Police for reasons of health ; and related the hang- ing somewhere in Turkey of a Syrian disguised as an Armenian. A workman, having read this last piece of valuable information, muttered as he passed me: "Est-il possible de nous raconter des betises pareilles?" These murmurs are not loud as yet, but they will become so, unless the official informa- tion bureau modifies its tactics. I left Toulon at seven in the evening for Paris, it having been found possible for the railway authorities at Nice to forward me my bag within twenty-four hours, which in view of their red-tape system surprised me very much. Only the fact that their regulations left them no alternative than to retain possession of the bag for ever could have induced them to do it. In the same carriage with me, going as far as Marseilles, were a General in IN FRANCE 118 uniform, an artillery officer and a Nicoise, the wife, so she soon informed us, of a Nice functionary. Only third-class tickets are being issued during the war time by the P.L.M.; and those travelling by another class pay the difference to the collector en route. This collector expressed amazement at my intention to go to Paris, and charitably offered to book me to any other nearer station I might choose. At one moment I thought from what he said that the train did not go as far as Paris, but he admitted that it did. The artillery officer, who was not going there, remarked encouragingly, "Paris! that's worth while!" I jokingly replied that I hoped to find Paris still in the same place when I arrived, and this called forth a sharp pro- test from the lady — so many Frenchwomen take everything au pied de la lettre, and have no sense of humour — who was indignant at the mere sugges- tion that Paris could have disappeared, or was at all likely to, as she added, for quite a long time to come. In reply to a question from the General, the artillery officer, who gave him "mon g^n^ral " with every other word, said that in the opinion of artillery experts, "mon g£n£ral," whom he had heard discussing the matter, the French, "mon general," would probably themselves be obliged to bombard Paris, "mon general," in order to drive the Germans out, should they ever get in, "mon general," to which the General replied with a faint smile, "Oh, mon Dieu ! " Our train was preceded by a number of trucks carrying 75 mm. cannon, and destined, so the artil- lery officer said, for Montenegro. H SIXTH WEEK Sept. $th. — After Avignon we began to meet and pass trains of wounded, most of whom looked fairly well and in good spirits; but some were couched on straw, and seemed to be in a bad state. One train was full of "emigrants," so a sergeant on a wayside platform called them when I asked him where they came from, and he added that hardly one of them could speak a word of French, but that work would be found for them. They looked very sad and so wolfishly hungry that I hadn't the face to eat the sandwich I had just bought with those greedy eyes looking on, and turned away into the corridor where they could not see me. I would have gladly given it to them, but one sand- wich among so many would have been worse than useless. At Valence there were stationed more trains of wounded, together with some German railway vans, transformed into French ambulance kitchens. Here I saw for the first time a German prisoner, a triangular-headed, weedy-looking man, very pale, capless, and wearing the grey German soldier's surtout with a red patch on the collar. The crowd stared and grinned at him, but made no hostile demonstration. Much keener interest was displayed in a handsome young zouave manacled by the wrists, and led on a short chain by two gendarmes, between whom he walked with perfect 114 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT 115 indifference. I questioned the guard, who said that he was probably an "insoumis," a deserter. The zouaves have the reputation of being such a splendid fighting corps, that it was quite a shock to witness the disgrace of this bronzed, athletic young warrior. The countryside all through the Provencal regions had a wonderfully rich aspect. One passed for miles and miles through regions which were one unending vineyard, loaded down with huge bunches of black-purple grapes. Wine will be very plentiful this year, and it is likely to be cheap too, for the very large German and Austrian consumption of French wine will have been suspended. All the south of France, and the Riviera in particular, will suffer greatly from the suppression of commercial relations between Germany and Austria. We shall no longer see the long procession of trains carrying tons and tons of flowers to Berlin and Vienna, to say nothing of intermediate cities, from Nice and the surrounding regions. Enormous quantities of dessert grapes were also exported from the south of France to northern Europe, and all this trade will be at a standstill. When winter begins, and the sense of this loss is borne in on the southern populations, what a howl will go up ! At present there is no outward sign that they are affected by the war in any disagreeable sense. As we travelled slowly along towards Paris, stopping at every little wayside station, crowds of women and children grouped round the platforms greeted us with cheers and waving of handkerchiefs. The shout of the populace had a curiously high, hysteric note. 116 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT Very few men were to be seen. But there, seemed to be little sense of the imminent danger in which the country undoubtedly finds itself at this juncture, or the slightest lack of confidence in the ultimate victory of the allied armies. The Petit Marseillais, copying from the Italian papers, reproduces the Russian official announce- ment of a serious "check " to Russian arms in East Prussia; General SansonofY killed; in fact, a terrible defeat. This was not known in Nice. 1 We passed through Lyons, where, though we were an hour late in arriving, and had consequently been expected for some time, no luncheon baskets were in readiness at the buffet. Instead of doing the best to serve us, the manager, his wife, and their female assistant had a three-cornered squabble as to which of them was responsible for the deficiency. I was reminded of what our English-American German- Jew friend had said at the outbreak of the war about the French improvidence in the matter of stock. Well, at Lyons it appears that nearly all the silk commission trade was in the hands of Germans (there was no reason why it should have been, except for the superior energy of the Germans), and all this will now have to be reorganised at vast expense. Commercially and industrially all France south of the Loire will be hit very hard, perhaps harder even than the north. Sept. 6th.— During the night I was roused by cries of "A mort ! A mort ! " coming from the plat- form of a small station where we had stopped. A crowd was hooting a very young German prisoner, 1 The battle of Tannenberg. IN FRANCE 117 an aviator, I was told, one of two brought down near Reims. His companion, it appeared, had been killed by the fall. It was too dark to catch more than a dim glimpse of him, but a porter said that his demeanour in the presence of this hostile out- burst was callous, scandalously so. Oh, dear ! But what must be welling up in that poor lad's heart, which he is suppressing, trying not to show ! His friend gone ! Himself a prisoner ! The bestial crowd ! No doubt we shall all be getting callous soon. But the first shock of such a sight as this sets all one's nerves aquiver. At Melun and Lieusant a number of British soldiers were stationed along the line. A man in the train living at Fontainebleau told me that the British General Staff was close by, but he did not know whether French was there. The soldiers looked very fresh and clean, also smug and merry, a little shy and self-conscious as is natural to Britons, but eager to return hand-wavings and hurrahs with salutes and certain curious twistings of the fingers and wrists, which they apparently think to be the gestures that the French populace will understand and expect of them. As the train drew nearer Paris it was possible to buy the morning papers, which announced that the Germans had made a move to the south-east of Paris. This could be interpreted either as the com- mencement of a movement of retreat, or of an attempt at encirclement. The train was now crowded with people from the outskirts, and their talk was extremely optimistic. None of them knew of the check to the Russians on the eastern frontier. It was a glorious day, with a sky like a blue star, 118 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT and an air of that wonderful clearness and softness which characterise the climate of Paris in the early autumn and the late spring-. Outside the stations rows and rows of wooden barriers extended right across the "place" to the entrance of the Rue de Lyon, and showed what a rush there must have been to get away. Certainly Paris, as I drove through it, looked much as usual, as fair and placid and busy, until one came to the central districts, and then this feeling was lost. One became con- scious of the vast emptiness of the place. I had no idea that there had been such an exodus. Paris was like a cemetery, or to be more accurate, like London on a Sunday a generation ago. The boulevards were silent and blenched. After ascer- taining at the hotel that the s, whom I had intended to lunch with had hurriedly left for London three days ago, I looked up the Cafe C , where usually on a fine Sunday such as this and in the middle of the day, there is not a seat vacant. The "terrasse" was entirely deserted, and inside were only E L , the King of the Boulevard, deserted by his court, and Dr. G , both look- ing very glum. To my question how they did they replied in mournful tones, "As well as you can expect in such circumstances." A Paris editor came in and said that the route from Paris to Fon- tainebleau was lined with automobiles fallen into the roadside ditches because their owners, fearful of not getting away quickly enough if they trusted to their habitual chauffeurs, had insisted on driving themselves. He also said that in the crush at the railway stations tragic scenes had been enacted, women and children being freely knocked down and IN FRANCE 119 trampled on. This is the sort of story which Paris will now manufacture wholesale. As a siege of Paris is more imminent than I expected, I have decided to go over to London while there is yet time, arrange certain matters, and get back before the communications between France and England are cut. At the Gare St. Lazare I heard that the Dover and Calais route was already closed. The day was so exceptionally lovely that very many of the remaining Parisians strolled out during the afternoon to the fortifications to watch military operations which are taking place there, the planting of chevaux de frise and light obstacles generally, such as tree-trunks and loopholed wooden barriers, which can only be meant to arrest a sudden raid of uhlans such as generally precedes the arrival of a German army in the neighbourhood of a fortified town. So there was a note of gentle holiday-making in the air, which froze out of it, however, with the sinking of the sun. In the Bois de Boulogne a large and deeply impressed crowd was watching the circling at a great distance overhead of a huge bird, which was generally taken to be an eagle. All kinds of ominous interpretations were suggested. Was it one of Napoleon's eagles, sprung to life like the "Bronze Eagle" in La Legende des Siecles, and come to reassure the Parisians ; or was it the spirit of the old Emperor William, reincarnated in the shape of the family bird of the Hohenzollerns, who was watching for the triumphal entry of his grandson into the French capital ? The objection to the latter explanation was that it had only one head. In point of fact, it was a vulture. These birds have 120 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT an exceptionally acute sense of smell, as is well- known, and there is no guessing from how far it may not have flown attracted by the odour of the thousands of dead that bestrew the battlefields around Paris. The bearing of the Paris cabmen was character- istic. Owing to the absence of all the auto-buses at the front, or most of them, horse-cabs are once more in demand, and the Paris cabman, true to his old traditions, has assumed that air of impenetrable haughtiness which he most loves to affect, going just as slowly and unwillingly as in the great days of the universal exhibitions. But this very arro- gance is pathetic, for it also proceeds, I am sure, from a stoical effort to hide the black despair which is rapidly rising in his heart. Most of these old men remember 1870. Sept. jth. — Having decided to take the Havre route, I arrived at the St. Lazare railway station at six o'clock, and to my surprise found no one there but the porters. It was explained to me that only the normal number of cross-channel passengers was expected, the great "rush" which began some days ago being now over. Indeed, the train con- tained only a few second-class passengers, and no first-class passengers at all until we got to St. Pierre de Vouvray, where we were invaded by a crowd of local peasants who filled up all the com- partments and turned out to belong to the oldest class of reservists and to be bound for Rouen. There they were to take the place of the younger soldiers, of whom a trainful had just passed us. One of these men, a peasant of the pure Picard IN FRANCE 121 type, which so closely resembles the English, came from St. Just, where he had been in contact with the Germans, and I was startled to hear from him — he made the remark in quite a casual way — that Amiens had surrendered without a blow. We little suspected in Nice three days ago that the German advance had been as rapid and successful as this. He went on to say that he was working on his farm when the first German soldiers arrived at St. Just, and he had had the presence of mind to take no notice of them, but to go on tossing straw with his pitchfork. They were quite young men, hardly more than eighteen years of age. They had been fairly polite, explaining, however, in very broken French that the French soldiers were "Capout. Ont peur. Partis ! " This, to judge from the constant repetition of the same words by the other soldiers who spoke to him, was evidently the universal conviction in the German army, confirmed, it must be admitted, in appearance, if not in fact, by General Joffre's tactics. The Picard continued to handle his pitch-fork, and the young German soldiers to question him: "Francais?" they inquired. "Oui," he replied. "Soldat?" "Non." "Pourquoi? " "Casse." It was lucky he told them that, otherwise he would have been taken prisoner and sent to Germany. An officer now appeared and beckoned to the farmer who wisely answered his summons with promptitude. The German officer thrust his revolver under the Frenchman's nose, and also asked in a terribly sharp voice, "Soldat? " "Non." "Pas mentir 1 " And at this the officer cocked his revolver with a click, which, said the peasant, curdled one's blood to hear. "Pas 122 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT mentir ! Pourquoi pas soldat?" "Je suis cassd.'^ "Combien de jours servi derniere fois? Pas mentir ! (More clicking from the revolver.) "Trois." The officer, still holding the revolver to his nose, gave him a terribly searching look; then he said, "You may go." The peasant gave us a gruesome account of the destruction wrought by the German troops in the French villages they passed through. All the cottages were ransacked for money, and all the flour and potatoes were taken away. At St. Just the baker's shop was occupied by German soldiers, and the baker forced to make bread for them. The farmer, who had five small children, went to the baker's to buy them bread after they had been without food for over twenty- four hours. Outside the shop were two German sentries with fixed bayonets. "Brout, brout ! " he shouted to them. But they only laughed. Then he made a gesture with his hand, as if measuring three feet from the ground, and said, "Enfants!" This the soldiers evidently understood, for one of them went into the shop and fetched an officer who came out holding his loaded revolver in his hand, and asked in fair French, " How many children ? " "Five!" "You may come in," said the officer, and turning to the baker, he added, "you may sell him bread, he has five children." "I asked for a six-pound loaf," the farmer told us, "but all I got was a one-pound loaf, and the baker said that it was more than his life was worth to give me more. Fortunately, I had been able to gather a few potatoes which the Germans had failed to find when they searched my cottage, and in the evening I managed to mask a lamp at the back of the house IN FRANCE 123 (all lights were forbidden at night on pain of death) and cook some of them. But children can't be fed on nothing but potatoes without making them ill." The farmer further told us that when the Germans come into a village, they shoot on sight any one who runs away, who has his hands in his pockets, or who does not come up at once when beckoned. Also you must not hesitate in answering any question. If you conform to these conditions you have a chance of escaping with your life; but the Germans completely devastate the country through which they pass. With that odd restraint of lan- guage which often characterises the French peasant, he remarked of the Germans : "Pour moi, ils man- quent de franchise. Ce n'est pas franc de vous mettre un revolver sous le nez quand on vous questionne, ni de pousser des cris de sauvages qui vous font glacer le sang. Cela n'est pas l'acte des francs; pour moi, ils ont l'attitude des criminels." He admitted that the Germans paid for what they took with "bons," but they were deaf to the appeals of the farmers to leave behind at least some good horses for the harvesting. They answered with a laugh, "A nous tout 9a!" One thing was clear from the farmer's narration, which his companions confirmed, and it was that, thanks to a practical and perfectly safe form of espionage, to which every German visitor in France must have been more or less contributing for years, the Germans were aware of every detail of the country through which they passed. They knew exactly where the baker's shop was situated, and how much bread he was capable of baking every day. This is only an instance of the thoroughness and completeness of their spy 124 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT information. As a result they lose no time in looking about, but know just where to go for everything they want. Thus movements of large bodies of troops are naturally much accelerated and aided. Another observation that the farmer had made was that the Germans carried off huge quan- tities of furniture, throwing away or destroying as they went what was too cumbrous to keep. They also affected to treat all French territory they have invaded as conquered country definitely annexed to the German Empire. The native populations left behind were told to consider themselves in future as German subjects, so that any assistance they might in future give to the French, or refuse to the Germans (should the latter come back) would be looked on as treason and punished with death. After a long wait outside Rouen to let trains full of troops go by, I got there at 12.45 and found there would be no train for Le Havre before 3.36. So I left my bag at the cloak-room and was glad to think that there was ample time to get lunch at the Hotel de Lisieux, in the Rue de la Savonnerie, where Barnard and I have so often fed in the piping- times of peace. The host, according to the Austrian painter Rademsky, another habitue of the Hotel- de Lisieux, is a homicidal maniac who, in complicity with his wife, tries to murder his customers by forcing them to over-eat themselves. The lunch was as plentiful and succulent as ever, but the host was by no means in his usual hospitable — or should it be called homicidal ? — mood. He scolded the waiter for serving seven decanters of cider to a party of officers numbering only six. This looked like a loosening of the old grip, a kind of death-bed IN FRANCE 125 repentance. What tragedies this war is already responsible for ! There had been, as I learnt later, a brief period of panic at Rouen, which may have accounted in some measure for the economic revolu- tion which had taken place at the Hotel de Lisieux. In view of a surrender of the town the officers had already doffed their side-arms. From Rouen to Le Havre the country-side pre- sented an interesting- comparison with the southern regions of France through which I had just passed. Both are magnificently rich and cultivated with that passionate industry and completeness which are characteristic of the French peasant. La belle France ! Wheat, all of which had been harvested, beet and sarrazin or buckwheat, corresponded in this northern picture to the vine of the south. It was a singular autumn, and while in the neighbourhood of Lyons I had noticed a lilac-tree in full bloom, here there were numerous fruit-trees covered with white petals as in spring. The tones of the atmo- sphere and sky are softer and more aqueous in Normandy than in Provence. Here, and there too, everything was so calm, so undisturbed, so peaceful. One thought of the devastation that these miserable Germans had wrought in places so near at hand, which before their arrival must have borne just this same gentle Norman look, and it made one's heart swell with contempt and anger. It is the despic- able, cowardly and idiotic side of the German invasion which is the most horrible part of it all. In the train was a little French boy wearing in his button-hole what looked like a gilt brooch, com- posed of the word "Suffolk." This had been given to him as a souvenir by a British soldier. The 126 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT habit of cutting off these badges and also buttons and distributing them as souvenirs to an admiring public is peculiar to our army; and would, I think, be very strongly discountenanced by the French military authorities if their own troops took to doing it. At Yvetot, the station-master, wearing the uniform of a lieutenant of the reserve, came to the window of the carriage and told a friend of his sitting opposite to me that the train that I ought to have caught at Rouen at 12.30 had been suppressed by telegram, that there had been a slight panic two days ago at Rouen, and another one of a more con- siderable character at Le Havre, and that 40,000 Russian troops had passed through his station the previous night after having been landed at Le Havre from Liverpool. It is difficult to disbelieve a statement coming from such an official source as this. On reaching the boat on the quay at Le Havre, whence we were to embark for Southamp- ton, all would-be passengers had to produce visaed passports. Mine was pronounced to be in order, and I was given a little square slip of paper which enabled me to go on board at once. But in front of me was a Frenchman, accompanied by a young lady belonging to the Salvation Army who, he said, was a Russian. Being foreigners it would be necessary for them to await the arrival of the British Consul, who was due in an hour's time to visa their passports. "But I am a Frenchman," said the young man. In his innocence he thought that the citizen of an allied nation would be treated by the British as one of themselves. "I am very sorrv to hear it," replied the English consular IN FRANCE 127 official, "but you will have to wait." "As a Frenchman," said the poor young man with bitter- ness, " I may be an object of pity, but this is hardly the moment for you, an Englishman, to tell me so." Of course the British official had no intention to be rude. His manner was courteous and even genial. What he meant was : "I am sorry that as you are a Frenchman with an unvisaed French passport, I am obliged to keep you waiting." But the way he put it and the misunderstanding that resulted were very typical of what is apt to happen when British and French come together. Le Havre presented an unusual appearance, with half-a-dozen search-lights crossing their huge batons of fire athwart the sky. It was a lovely night with a perfectly calm sea. Just after I had boarded the ship two huge troopships following one another at close distance swung slowly into the harbour. The soldiers who loaded their decks wore a foreign uniform, which could not be clearly distinguished in the darkness. Were they Russians? The captain of the twinship to ours, who was on board with us, a genial Irishman, agreed that they were foreign troops, but refused to believe that they were Russians, and put them down as Belgians. He could not, however, explain why the Belgians should be crossing from England to Le Havre. He had escorted Kitchener to the landing-stage some days previously, he told us, and had heard Kit- chener say on his return to Le Havre to some officers of the French General Staff: "Now you've got your orders, and I hope you will carry them out. There's too much damned red-tape in this country." There is in all countries, I am afraid, 128 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT and it is not so much the quantity as the quality of the red-tape that matters. It is precisely in its quality that the red-tape made in Germany is showing itself superior. It is when the tape breaks at the first pull that misfortune follows. Kitchener, according- to the Irish captain, was stopped fifty- five times by sentinels on his car-drive to Paris, and yet made an average of thirty-five miles an hour, which was certainly pretty good going. Sept. 8th. — Waking long before daybreak I looked through the porthole of my cabin and was surprised and pleased to find the whole sea lit up as brightly as the Paris boulevard used to be about the time when people came out of the theatres. And along the vast passages, guarded, it seemed, by these lights, search-lights and watchlights of all kinds; many giant vessels were passing to and fro at great speed and with an immunity from all danger, a surety of motion and direction which again sug- gested the comparison with a great city's boulevard and its perfectly organised traffic. Here, indeed, was a proof of Great Britain's mastery of the sea, and the spectacle sent a flush of pride and the sense, too, of artistic pleasure to one's heart. In the morning two huge troopships passed us, their sides lined and their decks packed with British troops, making one great curved patch of oakum- coloured khaki. They cheered, and we cheered them back. I had taken out my little Gaumont camera to snapshot them, when a stentorian voice from their ranks roared out, "We'll die hearty! " What splendid phrases this war is bringing forth from the throats of simple men. I did not take the IN FRANCE 129 photograph. I couldn't. It would have been a desecration. A scene with an utterance like that in it must be treasured in the memory in its entirety, with no one element left out. In the train from Southampton to London the young Frenchman whom I had seen at Le Havre quay with the Russian Salvation Army lass got into the carriage with me, and after a time I managed, with a great effort, to conquer my extreme natural shyness sufficiently to tell him that I had witnessed the scene between him and the British consular official, who, I assured him, had had no intention of being rude, but, in point of fact, was trying to be most courteous and considerate. The young Frenchman laughed, and said he hadn't given the matter a second thought, and it was clearly a misunderstanding. Both he and his young lady companion turned out to be charming people. London, which we reached after a journey of nearly thirty hours from Paris, seemed to be in a state of unusual bustle, but otherwise to bear with- out noticeable change its wonted look. It was a glorious autumn day, fogless, and with a bracing salt breeze blowing up the river from the sea. Having come from a country where everybody is so eager to find a way of being useful, or placing anything they possess at the disposition of the authorities that might be useful, my heart leapt with patriotic pride when I saw that all the taxi-motors were labelled with the words: "National Call to Arms. Recruiting Bureau. Your Country Wants You." "Ah," I said to myself, "this is doing things well. I shall be able to tell my French friends that the practical English have enlisted the 130 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT service of all the public taxi-cars to whirl off free of cost to the nearest recruiting station any young man of any class of society who wishes to join Kitchener's Army. This is a leaf taken from the book of the political election agents." I was not long in finding out my mistake, which others have made besides me. I had already been struck by the very varied ages of the people whom these cars were conveying, and my old friend F. C. Philips, who had similarly been taken in at first, disillu- sioned me. The inscription was an advertisement, and the patriotism of the motor-car owners only went to the extent of not charging for it. I found a universal belief prevailing, reflected upon some of the news-boards, that a large army of Russians had passed through from England to France, but there was no official confirmation or denial of the report. A somewhat exaggerated and not too intelligent optimism seemed to predominate in the City, and I, who was such a consistent optimist in Nice, and still am, so far as the ultimate discomfiture of the Germans is concerned, found myself looked upon as a scaremonger because, when questioned on the subject by my friends, it was impossible for me to do otherwise than describe the situation of Paris an extremely critical ; at least, that was the opinion of its inhabitants a few hours ago. Everything, so far as Paris is concerned, now depends on what will happen in the next few days. If Paris should be occupied by the Germans, the effect upon the rest of France would be almost overwhelming, not only morally, but administratively and politically. It would be just like shooting a man in the region of IN FRANCE 181 the heart. Whatever may be said to the contrary, the capture of Paris would be a knock-down, and perhaps a knock-out, blow. Few of the Englishmen that I meet are willing to see this, and in their irreflective and "Mafeking" state of mind they either resent being told so, or pretend that it does not matter. Others, mostly residents in or near the Temple, take up a kind of King's Bench attitude, and in the most approved cross-examining manner say, "This is a very serious statement you are making, sir." "Are you prepared to swear to the truth of what you say, sir ? " " Did you actually see the Germans at twenty miles distance from Paris, sir?" and so forth. They do all this very solemnly, and it is silly beyond words. But though the impertinence irritates and alarms, it is at the same time intensely pathetic. Most of these men are fathers of families, whose sons are either in the army or have volunteered, and it is the determina- tion to keep up a brave and confident front, in spite of the awful anxiety eating at their hearts, that is beneath the surface of their wild talk, and explains and excuses it. Sept. gth. — The news is distinctly brighter to- day, and the Germans, having seemingly failed in their endeavour to encircle Paris by an enveloping movement to the south-east, have, as far as can be judged from the meagre details to hand, begun a retreat all along the line. But it shows how utterly the people here misappreciate the importance of recent events, and the degree to which the situation of Paris, and with Paris France, was critical only twenty-four hours ago, that the wife of one of the 132 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT Temple residents with whom I lunched yesterday is reported by her husband to have remarked, "Won't our friend" [meaning me] "be disappointed this morning ! " while the other guest at the luncheon took the trouble to telephone later in the afternoon to his host that he thought I must have had a very disagreeable journey, which doubtless accounted for my pessimistic frame of mind. Only the putting out of the street-lamps about nine this evening, in view of a possible Zeppelin raid, has made the Londoners at all conscious that a war is in striking distance of them. An unusually thick fog would affect them in much the same way. P took me this morning to see M. Miyato- vitch, the president of the Balkan Agency, and former Serbian Minister here, with whom I had already exchanged correspondence, but had not yet personally met. M. Miyatovitch told us a curious story about the persistent refusal all his life long of the Austrian Emperor to go to war with Russia on the ground that a spell of ill-luck was over him, and that no war that he undertook could end otherwise than disastrously. Long ago the late Crown Prince Rudolph had urged him to attack Russia while she was still unprepared, but the Emperor had always said "No." "In five years," the Crown Prince had said, "it will be too late, for then Russia will be stronger than we are." But the Emperor persisted in his resolution. Evidently some very strong and mysterious influence must have been at work to make him thus abandon so persistent a policy in the last days of his life. M. Miyatovitch expressed surprise that the British censor invariably blue- IN FRANCE 133 pencilled any reference in the English papers to the atrocities committed by the Austrians in Serbia, which looked, he said, as if the British Government wanted to "menager " Austria; in other words, deal with her as lightly as possible. The Austrians, he said, were behaving every whit as barbarously as the Germans. Later on I met, also with P , Egmont Hake, who was able to give me what I have long sought — a description drawn from personal knowledge of George Borrow, who had, when Hake was a boy, been a frequent visitor to his father's house. Borrow, he told me, was a singularly striking, rather theatrical-looking man, standing six feet four in his stockings, with a loud, musical voice and very fine eyes. He had an abrupt way of opening a conversation with some queerly worded exclamation or phrase which was a little artificial, but very effective. With all this he was singularly shy, of middle-class society in particular, and when he visited Hake pere's house he would hang about at the gate and not enter until he had ascertained from one of the boys that there was no garden-party or other social entertaining in progress. Sept. 10th and nth. — Spent in arranging busi- ness, which is generally a slow process in London. The news gets better every day, and by the time that I get back the chances of any close or immediate siege of Paris by the Germans will be considerably lessened. SEVENTH WEEK Sept. 12th — There were great crowds of French people, mostly at Victoria Station, returning to France, and a number of young German women who were being expatriated via Ostend, talked German in loud, arrogant tones, which, if it were to be imitated by English people in Germany, would probably have resulted in their being thrown overboard. After a very rough passage from Folke- stone to Dieppe we reached Paris about nine o'clock, half-an-hour before the scheduled time, and going so slowly after passing Pontoise that the electric lights in the carriages went out, the dynamo only working when the train makes a certain speed. Sept. 13th — Gloriously fine; the perfection of a soft autumnal Parisian day, as was last Sunday, but what a difference in the aspect of the people as compared with a week ago ! The boulevards were crowded with a gay throng this afternoon, just as in normal times. Every one seems to have recovered his equanimity. I went early in the morning to obtain a "permis de sejour " (residential permit) at the police station. The secretary of the commissaire, the typical "chien de commissaire," as Parisian slang has it, was rough and gruff as usual, so I was surprised when 134 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT 13.5 he suddenly said to me : "Your soldiers have done splendid work in the north." "They have done their best," I replied. " Done their best," he echoed, "they've saved France!" This brought a lump into my throat. Only an Englishman who has lived for many years in Paris can appreciate what a tremendous thing this was for a Frenchman to say, and what a surpassing value the words had. In the afternoon there was a huge crowd outside Notre Dame, waiting for Cardinal Amette, the Archbishop of Paris, to make an address from a platform which had been erected in front of the principal door of the cathedral. The unusual public interest taken in an ecclesiastical ceremony of this kind is generally declared to denote a revival of religious feeling in France, as a first and direct moral outcome of the war. Further proofs will be necessary before that theory will be whollv acceptable. Having a call to make in the Rue de Meaux, I inquired at the "Metro" the best way of getting there. "Change." I was told, "at the Gare de l'Est. and then at ' Allemagne.' " This was con- firmed at the Gare de l'Est by the ticket-collector, who assured me there was such a station as "Allemagne," though I had been struck bv not finding it marked on the station chart. In the train there was no sign of "Allemagne," and it was only when I reached "Jean Jaures" that it suddenly flashed on my memory that the name of the Rue d'Allemagne, thus called, till now, because it was the high-road to the German frontier, had been changed by the busybody politicians to that of Germany's best friend in France, the Socialist Jean Jaures, 136 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT recently assassinated by a man who may be a lunatic, but professes to be a patriot. The apathy of the French "Metro" servants in proffering no useful explanation of this change to a foreigner was so gross as to be almost incredible, but it is typical enough. For all they cared I might have been carried all round the line, "or even," said S , the painter, to whom I related the anecdote at the N , "to Germany! " The King of the Boulevard, who was listening, begged me with indignation to reserve these sarcastic inventions ( !) till the end of the war. As I walked down the Rue Layafette from the dechristened Rue d'Allemagne, there was a little group close to the bridge over the silent and deserted Gare du Nord, surrounding some women who were singing to the doleful tune of the tradi- tional French "complainte" a song entitled "Ne pleurez pas, femmes francaises ! " It sounded like the telling of a long chaplet of sobs, and whether the emotion in their voices was genuine or not, the effect was inexpressibly touching. At the Cafe N I met F T . He has come from Brussels, which he left just as the German troops began to march in, and has since been exploring the neighbourhood of Boulogne. He says that there is an army of the Allies in the north, of 450,000 men, including many Canadians and non-French troops, ready to attack the retreat- ing German flank. This news, when received by his paper in London, was marked by the censor, "Not to be published— for the present," which is tantamount, he thinks, to confirming it. The aspect of the Cafe N , which, in spite of IN FRANCE 137 the utter decadence of the boulevard, may still pass as the most typically "boulevardian " rendezvous in Paris, is in some ways comic. Most of the old habitues are now in uniform, and many of them have the Cross of the Legion of Honour. In fact, there is an average of three such heroes to every table. An editor, a druggist, a dog-doctor, all flaunt the shining emblem with the blazing red ribbon on their blue tunics, but there is no sign that they are about to proceed to the front. They belong mostly to the category of the "embusqueV the soldiers who have cosy jobs at the regimental depots. It is certainly unfortunate in some respects that there is no distinction between the Cross of the Legion of Honour granted to civilians and that which the soldier receives for long and faithful service, or for deeds of heroism in the field. The Legion should have a civil and a military class, as have most of the Orders in England. Yesterday there was a large red-faced soldier, who might have been forty years of age, seated at the table next to where I was, and that incorrigible wag, de Bonne- fin, could not resist asking him for what services he had been awarded the splendid red ribbon and cross which dangled on his breast. "Mon- sieur," said the portly warrior with the greatest good nature, "Je suis tapissier!" (I am a house decora- tor). "Then I hope," said de Bonnefin, "that you will be the tapissier of the Invalides ! " The ironic humour of this witticism, which the tapissier obvi- ously failed to understand, may not be comprehen- sible to every English mind. The nickname of "tapissier de Notre Dame," was given to the Due de Luxembourg-Montmorency on account of the number 138 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT of captured flags which he brought back from his victorious campaign in the Low Countries, for it was the custom to hang up these flags at Notre Dame. The flags recently captured from the Germans have been placed in the Chapel of the Invalides. Sept. 14th. — A French paper this morning pub- lishes a despatch from General Joffre — " Chief Headquarters, nt/i September, 8.30/.;;?. "The battle which has been fought for the last five days is concluding with an incontestable victory." The Marquis de B 's clairvoyante may now legitimately claim that she "told us so." I dined and spent the evening with H T , the other guest being G W , the well- known war-artist, whom we had met earlier in the evening at the Cafe N . To this essentially Parisian cafe, where not so long ago there was only one English habitue whose presence was not looked at askance by its French customers, most of whom are literary and artistic men, with a sprink- ling of politicians and soldiers, there entered a party of youngsters, whose appearance caused a momen- tary pause of astonishment in the flood of talk and laughter circulating from table to table. They were evidently Englishmen, and were, no doubt, very honest young fellows, but they had the appearance and manners of the erstwhile London bus-conductor — that same cheeky-leery pushfulness, which may merit a good deal of sympathy, even if it does not command your admiration. W asked of IN FRANCE 139 H T , in a horrified whisper, "Who on earth are these ? " and when he was told that they were Press photographers, he uttered, with a kind of low wail, "Good God!" H T , who was on familiar terms with them, added, when they were gone (they were on their way back to England), that they formed part of the photographers' brigade. They are the only workers for the Press who have got anywhere near the firing line of either the French or British Armies, and this is mainly, or rather entirely, due to the fact that they speak no foreign language, and not even their own. The consequence is that it is impossible to make them understand that they must not go in this direction or that, and their own Cockney lingo is incomprehensible to the majority of the French interpreters. Tired of trying vainly to explain things to them, the French generally allow them to do much as they please. In this way they often secure not only fair pictures, but even valuable scraps of information. Sooner or later they are arrested, and ultimately expelled, as was the case with the gang that had just gone out, after which another gang arrives, with the same useful linguistic deficiencies, and new cameras to replace those which the military authorities have either seized or smashed. Naturally W expressed the strongest dis- approval of the employment of youths of this class, who, he maintains, must necessarily reduce the prestige (never very high) of the journalistic pro- fession with the military authorities. They never achieved anything, moreover, in the way of illus- trating warfare other than manoeuvre scenes photo- graphed in advance of the war, broken bridges, 140 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT blo\vn-up houses, and an occasional dead body ; and he blamed Kitchener for allowing them any access at all to the field of operations. Kitchener, J he said, had barred the legitimate war correspon- " dent and war artist, but had taken no effective means to prevent these "scareywags" (so W called them) to roam about at will. In W 's opinion, the best of all the British generals of our time was Wolseley, whom he would rank as high as Wellington. Kitchener could not, he thought, be for one moment compared with Joffre, who was really a great general, capable of successfully commanding a huge army and con- ducting war operations upon the most extensive modern scale. Joffre had certainly proved himself, so far, to be this, and there was nothing in Kitchener's career to be set against such a record. I mentioned to W the curious fact of M. de B 's clairvoyante having predicted that Joffre's first great victory would be on the nth of Septem- ber, whereupon he showed us an amulet which he wears on his wrist, a small silver disc, engraved on one side with circles and a star, supposed to indicate his horoscope, and on the reverse with an inscription in old Persian. This, he told us, was given him by a prophetess, a Miss St. John, whom he met on his way to Melbourne, and she had predicted the details of a complicated adventure which befell him later in the South African War, when he conveyed official despatches, after the Modder River disaster, to Lord Methuen, whom he found lying wounded in a cart. Everything that happened on this occasion was in accordance with what the prophetess had foretold. IN FRANCE 141 On the subject of modern war correspondence generally, both H T and W agreed that nowadays the English editors chiefly expected from their correspondents not news nor informa- tion, but hysterical gush about the heroism of "Tommy" and blood — blood — blood! They both poured ridicule on a despatch to which great pro- minence had been given in The Times, beginning with some such extravagant phrase as the follow- ing : "Would to God I had never had to describe the awful disaster which has befallen British arms," and relating the almost total destruction of a body of British troops at Tournay, due, according to The Times correspondent, to lack of support from the French. As if General Joffre, said H T , with a battle-line of over 250 miles, could be ex- pected to attribute capital importance to the inci- dental wiping out of 700 men, an event which could, in no case, vitally affect the huge issue at stake. They compared this rhodomontade with the quiet, soldier-like and impressive style of Field-Marshal French's first despatch. There is no doubt that ruthless "faking," and a clumsy, puerile effort to be Kiplingesque about everything and nothing, without pause or pity, does characterise the efforts of most of these "stirring writers," a certain pro- portion of whom are clearly very young and in- experienced, and with little but their impudence to recommend them. Their "stir" is a "bubble and squeak " which palls horribly on the palate when warmed up with every meal. Sept. i$th. — X. Y. Z. (these initials conceal an American personality famous in the literary and 142 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT publishing circles of New York) lunched with me at the hotel, and we decided to visit together, if possible, one of the battle-fields in the neighbour- hood of Paris. At the Gare de l'Est there was a large crowd inquiring after the trains. The lines were open as far as Lagny in the direction of Meaux, and to Belfort via Provins, and this was all. We decided to defer our choice till the moment of departure to-morrow morning. Opposite the station there were two English soldiers in uniform, accompanied by a civilian. They were clasping hands over a bottle of wine and singing "Auld Lang Syne," with a most doleful effect. A large crowd listened in deep and reveren- tial silence, and one or two women crossed them- selves. They thought it was a funeral hymn to the memory of lost comrades. The circumstance that all the three singers were intoxicated only made their song sound more ghastly. When the song was over the two soldiers and their companion went away, omitting to pay what they owed. The waiter succeeded in finding the civilian and obtaining the money, but in the meanwhile the cafe proprietor charitably insisted that only a mistake had been made. "They were singing a canticle over their wine, as is the custom in Protestant countries," he said, "and so they forgot ! " At the Cafe N I was glad to meet my old friend the Marquis de C , who from being exceptionally corpulent has now become compara- tively thin. He attributes this to the difficulty of getting enough to eat in war time. I did not know whether to condole with him or congratulate him IN FRANCE 143 on his loss of weight. De C , as a writer of plots, is the mainstay of the G Cinematograph, but in consequence of the war his work is almost at a standstill. Tragic as was his appearance, it was as nothing compared with that of a very small girl who accompanied him. Her comic look of despair had such a fine theatrical finish about it, that I asked de C who she was. "One of my principal artistes," he replied; "she's ten and a half! Full of talent ! And now dying of inactivity !" In the evening, after dining with me at the Hotel du R , F T said, on the authority of officers of the French Staff, with whom he had con- versed, that the resistance of the Belgians at Liege had really been to the advantage of the Germans, for it had misled Joffre into attacking Alsace, when he ought to have concentrated all his efforts on opposing the German march on Paris. This tallies somewhat with the story which is widely told here that Joffre was hampered in his movements by the home government, until the loss of the battle of Charleroi caused him to put his foot down and refuse to go any further unless he was given a free hand. In this he was evidently backed up by Kitchener, and the immediate consequences of his firm demeanour were the dismissal of Messimy from the Cabinet as Minister of War, the appoint- ment of Gallieni to the military governorship of Paris, and the departure of the Government to Bordeaux, where they were not only out of harm's way, both military and political, but could do little or no mischief. Messimy, they say, wanted at first to resist, but the proven fact that he had personally taken the responsibility as Minister of 144 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT War to modify, at General Percin's request, orders transmitted to the latter by Joffre, and this behind Joffre's back, enabled Poincare to say to him : "It is a choice between resignation, or Cherche-Midi.""' Cherche-Midi is the military prison of Paris, and what Poincare meant was that he must resign or stand his trial by court-martial. All this sounds very theatrical, but one must not forget that we are in France, and that the dramatis personce were French lawyers, artists of the spoken word. T also said, on an authority in Brussels which he looks upon as trustworthy, that the Ger- mans are constructing a huge fleet of small airships, with which they propose to bombard the British Navy. Evidently the loss of many of these dirigibles would be outweighed by the sinking of one British battleship. As all the cafes close now at 8.30, I went with M , of the New York Herald, one of the few remaining English journalists here, to the British " Imperial Club," which is in the Boulevard des Italiens, close to the Cafe Americain, and in the same building as the Cercle des Capucines, which used to be the old Press Club. There is, during the war time, a very free and easy, welcoming atmosphere about this English Club. It is appar- ently open to all Englishmen resident or passing through Paris, and it only closes at 11 p.m. Provins Sept. 16th. — I met X. Y. Z. at 7.30 at the Gare de l'Est, and we decided to leave in the direction IN FRANCE 145 of Gretz. X. Y. Z. was provided with an ingeni- ously selected stock of provisions, and not to be behindhand I purchased a pate. But for the present, at any rate, I cannot bring- myself to believe that it is ever impossible in France to find some- thing substantial to eat. Of course, in absolutely devastated villages! — but even then. We shall see. On reaching Gretz we were told by a local innkeeper that the principal points of interest were at Esternay and the intervening districts between Provins and Sezanne, where fighting had been in full progress on the 6th and 7th of September. The innkeeper told us blood-curdling stories of German atrocities. At Esternay German officers had forced a number of village girls to wait upon them in the costume of Eve, after which they shot them, and the daughter of the chef de Gare had been first violated and then murdered by a German soldier. This young girl the innkeeper said he knew personally. Fortunately we caught a train to Provins, but had to wait two hours at Longueville, where we lunched. It was the usual provincial table d'hote lunch, though I lost a bet with Z that we should be served with tete de veau. "Petit sale" took its place, and it was noble of me to tell Z this, for he had not discovered the difference by the time he had eaten it. Our three companions at table were an elderly man, his wife and a portly, middle-aged man, who was evidently their son. They seemed to be un- usually silent and depressed, but I put this down at first to the shy taciturnity so characteristic of the French provincial middle-classes, which Arthur K. 146 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT Young was the first to point out in his famous Voyage. The elder of the two men had in his buttonhole the blue ribbon of the "palmes acad^mi-' ques," which outside of Paris is generally a sure sign that the wearer is either the schoolmaster of the. locality or the druggist. After a time they thawed, and told us that they came from Le Mans, and were on their way back to Provins, which they had left on the approach of the Germans ! At Le Mans there was a large concentration camp of British troops. They repeated the stories we had already heard at Gretz of the atrocities committed by the German troops in the neighbourhood of Esternay. As we were all going to Provins I inquired after the famous "rose de Provins," which was introduced into France by the Crusaders from the Holy Land. Its name has been corrupted into "rose de Provence," though it never came from the Midi, and it is supposed to be the parent of all the red roses which have since been cultivated in Europe. "The ' rose de Provins ' still exists," said the elder man, "and is plentiful in and around Provins. It is a single red rose, and remarkable for simple beauty, and a strong, exquisite perfume. It is from this rose that the essence, or attar of roses, is mainly distilled, which enters, not infre- quently, into medical prescriptions." "In fact," said the younger man, "it is the rosa officinalis." It was now clear to me that the elder man was a "pharmacien." He strongly recommended us to visit Esternay and Sezanne, where very severe fighting had taken place, but said that there was nothing interesting to be seen south of, or in the immediate neighbourhood of, Provins. IN FRANCE 147 At the table next to us were two officers, one very old, the other quite young, and a hospital nurse, whose recherche dress was more suggestive of the demi-mondaine than the sister of mercy. They had a discussion as to the relative merits of the French, English and Belgian nurses, and decided that the French nurse was more "tendre." As to the differ- ence between the wounds inflicted by the French and the German bullets, the nurse said that in a general way the wound that the German bullet made was the easier to heal, and cleaner. The older officer took out a German bullet which he had found upon a neighbouring battlefield, and com- paring it with the French, attributed the difference described by the nurse to the blacker quality of the French powder, and he burnt some of it on his plate to prove the point. It spread a peculiar smell of burning paper through the room. The younger officer later made the remark that the shattering noise of the shells fired by the German heavy artillery was really disconcerting, and it required a very strong effort of will to retain one's sang-froid in the midst of it. In the train to Provins we came at once into contact with Provins public opinion, in a way which threw a curious light upon the French provincial character in these parts. I had incidentally in- formed Z that our elderly fellow-guest at the table d'hote was a pharmacien, but as I had no authority for the statement he declined to believe it. I might then have won back, had I wished, my extravagant bet on the tete de veau. With his wife and son the pharmacien got into the carriage behind ours, which was only separated from it by 148 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT a low, wooden partition. Sitting opposite was a hatless woman in a high state of excitement, accom- panied by a turbulent child. With extraordinary 1 volubility she poured forth all the vials of her contempt and indignation on those inhabitants of Provins who a few days previously had fled from the German approach. She declared that the Ger- mans had everywhere respected the lives and homes of the people who had remained, and had only pillaged the houses that had been deserted by their indwellers. She said that the first to flee from Provins was the mayor, after causing a proclama- tion to be drummed through the town advising the citizens of Provins to follow his example. The sub-prefect, who throughout had shown great courage, had immediately sent out another drummer with a proclamation annulling the mayor's, and assuring the population that there was no danger. None the less there had been a general exodus, including (and this she was specially bitter about) the one remaining doctor out of two — the other had been mobilised — and the pharmacien. Her little child — and here she strenuously quieted with a sound smack the struggling brat at her side — had been taken ill, and neither medical advice nor drugs were to be obtained. What she did not say about the pharmacien for going away was clearly not worth saying. He must have heard most of it in the adjoining carriage. However, the situation had not been without its consoling elements. She related with fiendish joy that the French soldiers had pillaged the deserted villas of some of these run-aways, or "froussetards," as she called them — notablv that of an Alsatian, whose name had raised IN FRANCE 149 in their minds a suspicion that he might be a Ger- man. Letters in German found in the villa— though it was natural enough that an Alsatian should be in possession of such letters — had con- firmed this belief, and to justify the sacking of his premises, the soldiers had scattered this corre- spondence in great profusion on the ramparts of Provins. So much champagne had been found in the Alsatian's cellar that the entire first regiment of artillery, easily overcome by a relatively small quantity of the wine after fasting for forty-eight hours, was drunk for two whole days. As we slowly walked up the principal streets of Provins on the look-out for a hotel, our acquaint- ances of the Longueville table d'hote passed us and nodded, but they looked a little shame-faced and disturbed at finding us just at that particular spot, for there on the left was a closed chemist's shop, the shutters of which they proceeded to take down ! In the afternoon, as we wandered along the Boulevard d'Aligre, we came across an aged gar- dener, who in reply to a question offered to show us over the famous ramparts of Provins, which are a most interesting survival of the Middle Ages. The old man, who was full of gleeful talk, had been a prisoner of war in Germany in 1870, and had retained an excellent impression of both his captors and his captivity. He was confined at Cologne and crossed the Rhine every day to Deutz, where he was employed in sewing tunics, receiving no wages, only food and drink. "When the panic began a few days ago at Provins," he said, "I had no fear. I was deter- mined to remain. It seemed to me that I knew the 150 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT Germans too well for them to do me any harm. I am fond of foreigners and of talking- to them. My captivity taught me that there are countries besides France, other people than Frenchmen, and other towns than Provins." He told us that it was true that French soldiers had pillaged in the town — he mentioned in par- ticular a regiment of chasseurs — and to my ques- tion how was it that the officers had not restrained them, he replied that all the non-commissioned officers were lying on the ramparts dead drunk. It was expected, he said, that the Germans would enter the town at any moment, and it was believed that they would bombard and destroy it. He showed us the cemetery where there was a row of little, white, wooden crosses, fifteen in number, over the graves of French soldiers, and bearing their names, and the names of their regiments. These men had died of their wounds in the Provins hospital. In front of them, without crosses, but planted with a few sprigs of consecrated boxwood, were the graves of some half-dozen German soldiers who had also died of their wounds in the hospital after having being taken prisoners. French and Germans had all been buried at the same time, and the gardener gave a moving account of the funeral ceremony, repeating several times on a cracked^ sing-song note: "Everything was done as beauti- fully as possible, regardless of trouble and expense. The arch-priest himself conducted the choral service, and there was not a dry eye in the church." There had been flowers, too, in profusion. The captain, who had acted as chief mourner, hao rried to make IN FRANCE 151 a speech over the grave, but he could only just utter: "Adieu — mes enfants ! " and then he had burst into tears. No distinction had been made between the French and the German coffins. All had equally come in for their share of bell-ringing, of flowers and holy water, of prayer and music and tears. " We are all human," said the aged gardener, "and we were careful to show that at Provins, at any rate, the dead of whatever nationality are treated with befitting reverence." I was struck with the unruffled serenity and even gaiety of this ancient French gardener who, in spite of being over seventy, declared that neither of us was a match for him at climbing the ramparts, and that he would easily tire us both out. It was a lovely autumn evening, and he expatiated, with a kind of affec- tionate admiration, on the beauty and richness of the landscape which stretched before us. That wide plain at our feet, stacked with the harvested oats, had been the site of the old mediaeval town ; the Provins of to-day, a mere village as compared with its noble ancestor, having been built within the walls of the fortress behind us, after the old town had been demolished. Originally the fortress, which had been a place of refuge for the inhabitants of the town when attacked by an enemy, had con- tained little else than monasteries, and it is on the ruins of these ancient ecclesiastical buildings that the existing town was built. We admired the gardens which spread all around us, and were full of fruit. "Yes, it has been a great year for fruit, apples and pears particularly," said the gardener, "but there is no sale for them in Paris; and calville 152 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT apples, which ought to fetch a franc apiece in the Paris market, and splendid dessert pears, are left to rot on the trees, or to be eaten by the stragglers . from the German Army, of whom there are still many lost and starving in the woods around. We catch one or two of them every day. They fire their revolvers in the air in sign of surrender, and are glad to be taken." We sat down upon the ramparts to breathe in the soft, aromatic air which rose from the deep-green trees and the fields below. "There," said our guide, pointing to the plain, spreading like a vast dun carpet to the horizon, from the foot of the ancient donjon, crowning the ramparts, and known as the "Tour de Cesar," "it was from there that the English came to Provins." "Was that last week? " asked my American friend eagerly, not guessing what the old man meant. "Oh, no-o-o ! " drawled out our aged friend on the high-and-low note peculiar to Provins, "that, Mon- sieur, was in the days of Joan of Arc ! We should have a different welcome for them if they came now. In time, perhaps, the Germans, too, will learn to love us." We wandered through many interesting relics back to the town, and the old gardener, with many courteous refusals, which were ultimately, under great pressure, overcome, accepted our offer of refreshments. I have since wondered whether or not he was a spy. In the evening the proprietress of the Hotel de la Fontaine, where we put up, said that the French soldiers had pillaged empty villas and shops, but she had not been the actual eye-witness of this. She thought that the Germans would probably come back again, for which she was furiously taken IN FRANCE 153 to task by the housemaid. She produced the im- pression upon me that she rather hoped they would. My own belief with regard to these so-called acts of pillaging, especially on the part of the French soldiers, is that they are largely brought about by defective commissariat arrangements, the deliberate absence of the proprietors from their villas, who thus hope to escape having soldiers billeted upon them, and the refusal of certain shopkeepers to supply troops on the march, who may be in dire need, with even the simplest necessaries for fear that they may not be paid. I remember in Greece in 1897 that the innkeepers could often only be induced by threats to serve anything to eat or drink, even when money was offered for it. Still, it is fairly clear that there must have been a com- mencement of demoralisation among the troops at Provins, inspired, no doubt, by the long retreat and by the panic of the inhabitants. A Battle-field Sept. jyth. — Early in the morning it began to pour with rain, and in spite of the proverb quoted by Z , "Rain before seven, clear at eleven," it rained bitterly all day until sunset. We started off in the train for Esternay, but two young railwaymen in the carriage, who had traversed all the country round Provins within the past few days, persuaded us to stop at Montceaux St. Bon, where there had been very severe fighting during the 6th and the 7th of September. Mont- ceaux St. Bon was, in fact, the extreme southern 154 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT point below Paris to which the German Army had attained. It constituted the apex of their advancing and, as they hoped, enveloping movement against Paris, and it was here that the retreat of their centre had begun. The immense rolling plain stretching away on all sides and northwards in the direction of Reims, with undulations here and there, but few obstacles to the movements of troops in huge bodies, was exactly what the unprofessional mind pictures as the ideal battle-field. It looked very melancholy under the driving rain — The rain As white as pain ! and dotted over with great holes, with the surround- ing grass burnt black and yellow, where the shells had fallen. Quantities of sodden straw and hay littered the ground in all directions, which had been used by the troops to sleep on, and perhaps to furnish some slight cover against the enemies' bullets. Little blue and white tins, which appar- ently had contained preserved haricot beans, were scattered everywhere. With the exception of heavy portions of German mitrailleuses, smashed by French shells, a broken gun-carriage here and there, also German, all the debris of the battle — helmets, cartridges, etc. — had been diligently swept up. As soon as the troops had quitted the ground, thou- sands of peasants, so we were told, had spread over it like locusts, clearing away everything which could be turned to any profitable use, and, of course, among them were many "pillards" and ghouls, whose object was to strip the dead and rob the wounded. The rural police were quite in- IN FRANCE 155 capable of coping with these depredators. But there is a rule which forbids anything from being removed by private persons from the battle-field, and people taking away with them souvenirs which cannot easily be concealed, such as guns and other weapons, are liable to be relieved of them on arriv- ing in Paris by the Customs officers. One of the reasons given for this is to prevent the spread of contagion. The station of Montceaux St. Bon, which had been held by the Germans and taken by assault by the French, had been hurriedly loopholed in several places, and some of their loopholes the Germans had had no time to finish, which gave an idea of the desperate nature of the fighting. A corrugated-iron shed adjoining the station was honeycombed with bullet shots, which had pierced it like paper. In the station itself, the Germans had ransacked the station-master's desk, and had tried unsuccessfully to break the ticket-punching machine, but otherwise they had done no damage, and even the pictorial advertisements on the walls of seaside bathing places remained intact. We sat for a time in the silent little station, eating Z 's provisions, exchanging an occasional remark with the two young railwaymen, each of whom was flirt- ing desperately with a young girl, and looked out across the desolate, rain-soaked country. Hardly a soul was to be seen. Now and again an old peasant woman came struggling along the road under an umbrella, or a streaming priest, wet through, hurried by on a bicycle. On either side of the station were mounds of freshly dug earth, surmounted with brown wooden crosses, which 156 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT marked the graves of the killed. A burnt odour — what the French call a "russet " odour — faintly per- vaded the air, the smell which rises from buildings which have been destroyed by fire and then rained on. In the distance was the faint sound of guns from the neighbourhood of Reims. We had a sense of infinite tranquillity with the lonely dead scattered around us, left behind to sleep the eternal sleep in this still country-side. It was their stillness which seemed to be shared by these brooding, almost treeless plains, and it was as if Mother Earth were now slumbering softly after having lulled to rest the children whom she had gathered back into her lap. During a very brief stoppage of the rain we walked up to the village, or rather what had once been the village, for the French had shelled out the occupying Germans, and reduced everything to utter ruin. A large farmhouse close to the station had been burnt out, together with 600 sheep; so, at least, the mayor told us. He had come up, a little suspiciously, while I was photographing the building but became amiable and communicative when he learned our nationalities. It was one of those vast, old-fashioned French farms, of which there are so many in the immediate neighbourhood of Paris, probably three hundred years old at leash The village itself was now merely a waste of tumbled and blackened brick and stone. Its two and only cafes, which had stood facing one another in the principal street, had been so completely blown to smithereens that the ruins of the one were practically indistinguishable from those of the other. The splintered billiard tables and mirrors IN FRANCE 157 and broken doors of both establishments were all heaped one on the top of the other, interspersed with masses of broken masonry and plaster, smashed chairs and tables, singed bedding, burnt paper, chimney-pots, broken telegraph-wire — in fact, all the ordinary debris of a devastating fire, the whole surrounded by a kind of hoar-frost of glass, caused by the explosion of the shells, which had reduced every window in the village to fine powder. With all conceivable variations of mis- shapenness and grotesque angles made by the tottering, smoke-besmirched walls and fallen rafters, this picture was repeated throughout the length and breadth of what had been less than a fortnight ago the peaceful and smiling hamlet of Montceaux St. Bon. Here, at last, was a French village bereft of anything in the nature of provender. "There is nothing to be got," said an old peasant woman. "Nothing. Nothing ! " Practically all the inhabit- ants had been forced to leave, only a few of the outlying cottages, though pierced with shells, being- fit to shelter a human being. We had passed in the train a long procession of peasants slowly wending their way in the direc- tion of Paris, carrying with them all their portable worldly possessions, some of them on bicycles, others wheeling babies in barrows, and the women and children as far as possible in farm-carts. They were the fugitives from Montceaux St. Bon and the adjacent villages as far as Courgivaux and Esternay, where the battle had also raged with terrible fury. In fact, right away to Esternay and Sezanne, in the fields, and more particularly the deep ditches lining the high-road, were buried, we 158 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT were told, some 6,000 German dead, and so hur- riedly had the work been carried out that heads and arms were visible here and there, washed to the surface by the pouring rain, a gruesome and loathsome sight which neither my friend nor I had any stomach for. Sufficient for the day was the evil thereof, for what more heartrending spectacle could well be imagined than these burnt- out and deserted homesteads? And yet I felt almost self-reproachful that it roused less emotion in me than I should have expected. There is some- thing in the peace and silence which come after the greatest catastrophes which is strangely and imperatively consoling. And this applies not only to the mere sympathetic onlooker, but to the victims themselves. Although barely a week had elapsed since the destruction of their homes, those among the Montceaux St. Bon peasants who had managed to find some kind of neighbouring shelter were already calmly, almost cheerfully, at any rate with an air of imperturbable indifference, scratching away at their fields, getting ready for the work of the winter. One old fellow to whom we remarked upon the wretched weather replied calmly, " It's the season for it ! " and went on digging. Already the rural population had recovered from the shock of. Death, and stories of lost sons and husbands were related and listened to with grave resignation, but in the tone of ordinary conversation. The explana- tion must be that Death, after all, is as natural a phenomenon as Life, but has no continuous interest comparable with that of Life. With the rain coming down more and more heavily we returned to the station, and took train IN FRANCE 159 to Paris. Montceaux St. Bon will have an import- ant niche in the history of this war, for it represents the extreme point reached by the German Army in their attempt, begun on Sunday, the 6th (the day that I arrived in Paris from Nice), to envelop the French left, and push through across the Marne to Paris by Provins and Nogent. That the Germans were beaten here helped materially to turn their onward movement, and was the beginning of the French victory of the Marne, completed five days afterwards. The local belief is that General Joffre learned from an English aviator that the Crown Prince's army, coming from the east, had failed to effect a junction with General von Kluck's army, fronting the French centre, and had accordingly driven in a wedge between the two German armies, which had necessitated their precipitate retreat all along the line. At the station was a little crowd of the Montceaux St. Bon peasants, en route, most of them, for Provins. The story of the young girls of Esternay, stripped and forced to wait upon their German captors, had evidently been spread all over the neighbourhood, and was firmly believed. One old lady related a not unsimilar tale of the schoolmaster and the mayor of the village next to Montceaux, who, after being completely stripped and insulted by the Germans, were saved by the arrival of the French soldiers just as they were about to be wan- tonly shot. Had they not raised the cry of "Vive la France ! " the French soldiers, not recognising them, owing to their lack of clothing, as fellow- countrymen, and thinking they were Germans, would themselves have completed the execution. 160 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT It was remarkable that those among- the peasants who remembered the invasion of the Germans in 1870 were agreed as to the great difference they think they perceive in the conduct of the Germans then as compared with now. In 1870, they say, the Germans were good-humoured, paid for all they took in "bons," or promissory bills, which were promptly cashed by the German regimental trea- sury, and neither molested the inhabitants nor destroyed their property. This may have been the case at Montceaux St. Bon, but the records of the last war prove without any doubt that German brutality was, as a general rule, just as shamelessly exercised against the defenceless French popula- tions in 1870 as in 1914. If it was a little less open, less publicly flaunted as a national product to be proud of, and bearing the German "kultur" trade-mark, this was because Germany was not then quite so cocksure of herself as she was four months ago, and still paid a lingering meed of deference to the opinion of civilised Europe. Moreover, the old Emperor William I had some of the instincts of a gentleman, which is the last thing one could say of his grandson. One peasant woman said that a neighbour of hers was accused of having refused a French soldier a little straw to sleep on. She added, "I don't think I should have refused a little straw." There was also this upon which most of the peasants seemed 10 be agreed : that in the villages where the mayors and the inhabitants had not fled at the approach of the Germans they were — with notable exceptions, of course — fairly well treated, and their property and persons respected. In- IN FRANCE 161 stances, however, were quoted of cottagers and farm people at Montceaux being forced by the Germans to set fire to their own houses, which seems to be a new German method of systematically terrorising the population of an invaded territory; but one old peasant expressed in my hearing the belief that in some way or another the villagers whom the Germans had treated in this way must have gone out of their way to provoke them. She quoted the case of her neighbour, who had had her son shot beneath her eyes, because when the Ger- mans had approached the farm he had pointed a gun at them, which was, as she added, "a very reprehensible thing to do." It is curious to note what extremes, and unex- pected extremes, of bravery and cowardice a war calls forth. The two young railwaymen who were in the carriage with us on our way to Montceaux St. Bon were loud in their praises of the sous- pr^fet of Provins, M. Basset, who had bravely stuck to his post, and done all in his power to calm the apprehensions of the Provinsois, excusably thrown into a state of panic by the defection of both the "commandant de la place" and the mayor. As soon as the Germans were reported to be within two hours' march of Provins the commandant de la place, a certain Major H , had chartered a special train and bolted with all his 800 men, repre- senting the armed forces of Provins, not stopping till he got to Montpellier. He had thus jeopardised the lives and property of the inhabitants to whom he owed protection, for though, admittedly, he could not have withstood the German onslaught, his pre- sence and that of his men were necessary to keep L 162 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT order in the town. "At least," the sous-pr^fet had sarcastically remarked, "the Major will be safe at Montpellier." As a result of these and similar incidents the Provins population is now divided into two bitterly hostile factions : those who, having remained, now apply the opprobrious term of "froussetards," or "white-feathers" (in Parisian slang the word is "froussards ), to the runaways, while these, most of whom are now back again, bitterly resent the epithet of "froussetard," on the ground that had they stopped till the Germans arrived no food would have been left by the invaders upon which the townspeople could have subsisted. There is evidently an element of reason on both sides. In the Paris train, after changing at Longueville, there was a very robust, red-faced and talkative man, with the blue ribbon of the "palmes acade- miques," who, from the pedantic phrasing that he put into his talk and his inexhaustible fund of cheap information, was evidently a provincial school- master — not a pharmacien this time. As my friend and I were conversing in English, he and the three other persons in the carriage clearly took us, to judge from their hostile and suspicious looks, to be German spies. The red-faced man came from Nancy, and it was amusing to hear him and his newly found acquaintances divide up the German bearskin, on the strength of the Marne victory, and also with the idea, I think, of impressing us. "The Germans have shown us the way," said the red-faced man, "by fixing the war indemnity they meant to claim from us at thirty milliards of francs. We will go one better than they. We will ask for IN FRANCE 163 thirty milliards of marks!" This suggestion was hailed with vigorous approval. On reaching Paris, I found a letter from de B in Nice, which said: "There cannot possibly be any chance of a ruse in the Germans' almost dis- astrous retreat. In my opinion there is no doubt about their intentions. They are seized by the sentimental desire to seek a grave at Waterloo, or near by, and they are hurrying there before they get destroyed elsewhere ! Between this and then we will know many things that the clairvoyante did not tell us. Did you remember the nth of Sep- tember? It ivas the first French victory." X. Y. Z., at dinner to-night, remarked that to-day of all the nations England alone has a heart. Even America has not really got a heart, though she pretends to have. It was an American who said this, otherwise I should not have quoted it. I know very little about America. In business matters I have always obtained larger treatment from Ameri- cans than from the English. I can neither deny nor confirm what X. Y. Z. said about his own country; but in using the term England he ex- cluded, and I felt that he meant to exclude, Scot- land, Ireland and Wales. Where, indeed, would these three peoples be to-day but for the glowing heart of England ? Nations they are not and never have been, but satellites around the sun of Eng- land's ancient glory, drawing their warmth and life from her heart, reservoirs for filling up the uncon- sidered gaps of other nationalities, with that free- masonry among themselves which is the instinctive singularity and the chief source of power, often of very great power, of vagabond and parasitic races, 164 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT a singularity of which the most striking - example is supplied by the Jews. If France, and with her continental Europe, are saved to-day from the hideous and barbaric domination of Germany, it is thanks to the English heart. This does not mean that the Scotch, the Irish and the Welsh are not fighting just as bravely side by side with the English for the liberties of the civilised world, but it was just this English heart which made it pos- sible, that higher sentimental altruism, which is neither a Scotch, nor an Irish, nor a Welsh charac- teristic, but typifies the dreamy, idealistic people of poets that the English essentially are, malgre their commercial successes and their industrial activities. In this great contest between Right and Wrong the heart-beat of England is the highest and noblest of all, and it is because the splendour of her pose throws into blackest contrast the vile snake-writhings and tiger-crouch of the Germans that they hate her so much. Sept. 18th. — In the afternoon I bought the latest Times that has arrived (Sept. 15th), and find in it a full account of the so-called "Breach of Truce" by the British Government in connection with Home Rule. If it be true, as The Times says, that "Nationalist Ireland — in spite of Mr. Redmond's fine declaration at the outset of the war — still dis- owns her gallant soldiers, flaunts placards against enlistment, and preaches sedition in her news- papers," this confirms the remark I made to de B on the first day of the French mobilisation, that the only possible betrayal that could assail Great Britain in her own camp would come from IN FRANCE 165 the Catholic Irish. In the same paper there is a curious blunder, or rather succession of blunders, made by an English newspaper correspondent in Bordeaux. He describes M. Clemenceau as "stand- ing for the righting spirit of France " and as " Mayor of Montmartre." It is over forty years since M. Clemenceau, as Mayor of Montmartre during the Commune, arrived among his electors conveniently too late to prevent Generals Clement and Thomas, of the active army, from being murdered in the most cowardly way by the Montmartre mob. It was the "righting spirit," no doubt, of M. Clemen- ceau which successfully inspired his campaign in the Chamber against any armed intervention in Egypt when France was invited by Great Britain to join her in bombarding Alexandria at the time of the Arabi revolt. But, according to the Petit Journal at the time, it was English gold that really did it. In any case the outcome of this exhibition of "righting spirit" on the part of M. Clemenceau was that France was ousted from Egypt, while the outcome of the Petit Journal's campaign was that M. Clemenceau, having apparently nothing to say to the accusations made against him, was ousted from public life for about ten years, only creeping back to it through the Senate. Presumably it was because M. Clemenceau stands for the fighting spirit of France that he first backed up General Boulanger for all he was worth, and then deserted him; that he brought about the downfall of M. Delcasse" when that patriotic statesman was fighting German diplomacy over the Morocco incident ; that he was responsible for appointing Minister of War ex-Colonel Picquart, who had been cashiered from 166 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT the army in connection with the Dreyfus case. Picquart, as Minister, so effectually reduced the war material of the French Army that, according to the Temps, itself a Dreyfusist organ, had France gone to war with Germany during the Picquart Ministry, which was also that of M. Clemenceau, she would inevitably have been crushed beyond hope of redemption. And the Temps furnished the documentary proofs of its allegations. M. Clemenceau will be remembered in the history of the Third Republic as the friend and political backer of Cornelius Herz, who organ- ised the corruption of the French Parliament in the Panama affair, as an orator of remarkable volubility, suggesting a French concierge squab- bling with one of her lodgers, but with no real eloquence or talent for sober debate, as the typical French professional politician of the nineteenth century, starting with nothing, and enriching him- self in the diligent practice of his profession, a master of state-craft — with a "grave " accent on the "c" — but as "representing the fighting spirit of France :" gracious no ! Sept. igth — The French papers publish no more about the "Breach of Truce" than that the British Government has decided to defer the operation of the Home Rule Act and the Welsh Disestablish- ment Act until the end of the war. All comment has been censored out. This is just as well, for a shockingly bad impression would have been pro- duced, had the French censors allowed it to be known that the British Government had risked a revival at home of the political disputes which, IN FRANCE 167 before the war, Germany was counting on as a trump-card in her game. The English people, as I was able to judge last week, little appreciate how near the French were to demoralisation and despair a few days ago, when the German Army was prac- tically hammering at the gates of Paris and their Government was in flight to Bordeaux. They have for the present an immense belief and confidence in the tenacity and solidarity of the allied English forces. Now, if they were to suspect that, owing to internal political dissensions, deliberately aroused anew by the British Government, the British sup- port was in danger of being weakened, they would be capable of losing hope almost entirely. EIGHTH AND NINTH WEEKS Sept. lgth. — There is no change in the situation at the front, and the impression one has of Paris is also unaltered. The bad weather keeps most people indoors. One has the sense of living with one foot in the other world. The wounded are attracted back to the fighting line like moths to a candle. Death itself is beginning to exercise a curious kind of attraction. One wishes to survive, so as to see the end of the war and participate in the final triumph, but at the same time one feels that to die in one's bed after such a war as this will be an indelible shame. Never was there such a chance to die beautifully, impeccably, as now, and certainly the chance will never come again in our lifetime. In- stinctively one wants to be with the heroic minority, which is such a big minority that to be left out of it impresses like a kind of ostracism. Death is more than half, more than two-thirds, of life. It is from the finalities of things that Art and Beauty emerge into being. I heard from F T , who is installed at the Terminus, that the Red Cross officials who have their head-quarters there have been warned of the arrival in Paris to-morrow of 6,000 English wounded from Noyon, where four English regiments have been practically wiped out : the Black Watch, the 168 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT 169 Irish Guards, the Middlesex Regiment and the Coldstreams. Sept. 20th. — In the afternoon, in spite of violent showers of rain and hail, which a waiter solemnly told us were due to the heavy cannonading on the front, Z and I went to the Gare du Nord on foot to ascertain whether there was any means of getting by train to Reims; but there proved to be none. On our way back we met a stream of taxi- autos flying the British and Red Cross flags bring- ing back British wounded from the front, some of those, no doubt, that F T told me about yesterday. It is a sight that brings a lump into your throat. In fact, I find that since this war began, though I am not exceptionally emotional, and perhaps have a tendency the other way, with what one reads in the papers, and sees and hears, of the sad things and the brave things done and said, one's eyes are wet, on an average, eight times a day. These splendid English wounded, band- aged in all kinds of ways, lay back on the cushions grave and silent and motionless. They did look gentlemen. The evening papers announce that the Germans are bombarding the cathedral of Reims, which is now in flames. If it should prove to be true that the cathedral has been destroyed, the extermination of the entire German nation would not compensate for such an abominable act of vandalism. S , the painter, quite rightly suggested at the Cafe" Napolitain that when the reckoning comes to be paid the Germans should be deprived of the whole of their Art collections, as being unworthy to possess 170 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT anything of beauty. The idea of hanging the German Emperor in chains, as a felon and a mur- derer, on the ruins of the cathedral was also mooted. After such a crime as this no punishment could be too bad for the villainous brute. It seems as if it were an act of desperation preceding an utter col- lapse, or of vengeance for some terrible personal loss, as to which we have, so far, no information. In any case, it stains with indelible dishonour the name of Germany for all time. The only other people fiendish and barbarous enough to have con- ceived and set the example of such an abominable act of vandalism, within recent times, are the British suffragettes. At the Cafe* N a French "pharmacien- major," a jovial, talkative, black-haired fellow, roll- ing in fat, who acts as a kind of go-between for administrative purposes between the French and the English medical services, gave me his impres- sion of the English soldiers with whom he is in daily contact. In the first place, it is with them that he prefers to take his meals, their cooking, he declares, being more expeditious than the French, and cleaner. He admires their habit of playing football up to within a couple of hours of going into action. But his greatest admiration is reserved for Field-Marshal French, who, moreover, is vastly popular with his men. On one occasion French praised our "pharmacien-major" for something he had done in the following words: "C'est bien — maintenant c'est tout ! " He is not a man of many words, and wastes no time. Also his decisions are prompt, and he is no respecter of persons. The Mayor of Melun having recommended the popula- IN FRANCE 171 tion of that town to flee, French, whose head-quar- ters were close by, had him arrested and locked up. The mayor angrily protested that, in addition to being mayor, he was a deputy of the French Chamber, and that his person was, therefore, in- tangible. "Je m'en fous," was French's reply, "I command here," and he kept the panic-spreading mayor and deputy imprisoned for two days. Sept. 21st. — This morning I came across the Marquis de Bois6, just arrived with despatches from the fighting line at Soissons. Among notable things he said that the Germans are holding their positions in the north, owing to their heavy artil- lery, in which the French, for the present, are lacking. "The Germans," he remarked, a little despondingly, "know how to fight — better than we do ! " However, he was very hopeful as to the ultimate victory of the French. He described the strange effects of the mysterious Turpin shell, about which there is so much contradictory talk. He confirmed the rumour that, owing to some secret element in its composition, it killed without wound- ing. He had seen very many Germans in trenches, posed in natural attitudes, as if aiming with their rifles, and about to fire, having the appearance of being alive, but all dead. On getting close to them their faces were found to be black, and the rifles near them were burnt to a cinder, so far as any wood-work was concerned, and the very iron and steel of the guns had the look of having been submitted to the action of some terrifically hot flame. For the present the Turpin she'l seems to be used sparingly, and either, thinks 172 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT de Boise\ it has an asphyxiating effect, or it kills by concussion. De Boise's brother, Comte de Boise\ is a fine" 1 , soldier, and went through the Transvaal War, as the fidus Achates of the unfortunate Comte de Villebois Mareuil, who was killed fighting for the Boers. It will be remembered with what chivalrous regard for the brave Frenchman's gallantry Lord Methuen set up, at his own expense, a handsome monument over his grave. I asked Comte de Boise" what it was that had induced him to fight against us. "De Villebois Mareuil," he said, "wanted to get killed on account of an unfortunate love affair. I was his confidant and the executor of his last wishes, so I knew all about that. He gained his end." "But he might have gained it," I suggested, "without potting at Tommy Atkins, who was in no way responsible for his broken heart." De Boise laughed. "A true soldier must always fight, and all true soldiers know that, and condone it, as Lord Methuen did. Besides, there was that Fashoda business. . . . But all that is over and forgotten now, and no one admires and loves England more than I do." I sent five letters over to London by a corre- spondent who was crossing the Channel. This is now the only way of getting anything promptly to England, for the postal communications have again broken down. It is now nine days since any letter from England has reached me. IN FRANCE 173 Reims — a Souvenir An impression, first of all, on entering the Cathe- dral of Space multiplied by Time, of History dis- appearing, elusive and captureless, in limitless gloom, of the Past as an angry Spectre, driven away by modern impiety and neglect from this bejewelled reliquary which had. been both its sepulchre and its shrine. The volume of space startled and held you like a stupendous rush of sound, thundering out a mystic message in a voice that came from the dead, as magically awe-inspiring, and yet as cryptic, as might be the secret name of God. Suddenly the Middle Ages, summoned back from the tomb, materialised themselves before you, en- veloping you with their supernatural personality. You touched with your finger the resuscitated fabric of a world's faith. You murmured to yourself : was it this, the faith of our forefathers ? Here, indeed, was a vision of lost reality, spiritualised in a sudden blaze of revelation. But how profound still the mystery was ! You had a sense of balanced right and might, due to the symbolic harmony of the colossal architectural proportions of the building, which roused within you the spirit of love, and imposed reverence. The cathedral atmosphere was instinct with the solemn inspiration of infinite goodness and godlike power. Here was the House of Faith, of the faith of the generations of Christendom that had faded away. Here was that faith's articulate expression in stone, surviving the spoken word and 174 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT living act, but yet delphic in its utterance. For you might wonder and adore and absorb impres- . sions, exquisite, intense, ineffable, till your brain reeled, you were still in the presence of a closed book, beautiful, illuminated, gilded, begemmed, but none the less guarding, sphynx-like, a tale of spirit- ual and national life which no human eye could ever again wholly read. As well seek to breathe in all the north wind at one gulp. The record, however, though most of its signifi- cance could only be dimly guessed at and imper- fectly felt, must once have been complete. The France of the Middle Ages vitalised whole-souledly by the Christian faith, which dominated every phase and flourish and outsprouting of her national being was here depicted and personified on these scrolls and in these statues of stone. Before you and around you was a living library of national lore, from which no secret of heart or soul affecting French humanity throughout a full age was miss- ing, however little of it might be entirely clear to us now. All this priceless inheritance of French mediaeval Art and of French History was a monu- ment of French heredity. All French humour and wit and irony and sensibility were laughing and weeping and writhing from these walls. The stone and the sanctity of the place gave a grim and high relief to the carvings — texts, conceived with exu- berant emotion, in a spirit of gigantic imagery, befitting the Leviathan-like pulpit from which they were to be preached to the countless generations that were to come. It has been a mistake to apply to any of them the epithet of "grotesque." The stupendous size and overwhelming majesty IN FRANCE 175 of the cathedral were, indeed, catholic in the im- pression of universal and unchallenged authority which they conveyed. But the extreme of rugged- ness, of harsh, almost menacing angularity and sharpness of outline in some of the exterior features of the cathedral, helped to intensify the unimagin- able loveliness of the interior shadows upon which glowed the light from the old stained glass with the softness of music heard in a dream, of the intricate lace-like tracery and stone fretwork of the portals and buttresses, of the spirit-faces of many of the statues. Of these strange, inspired creations, the most beautiful, perhaps, was the face of a blind man, with the lifelong reverie of the blind giving an infinity of pathetic expression to the sightless eyes. It was but a head carved beneath a groin at the back of the South Tower. Who the sculptor was no one knows. An anonymous stone-mason, he was a genius as great, if not greater, than that other nameless but supreme artist who carved the recumbent, nearly nude, statue of the dead Due de Brissac in Rouen Cathedral, a masterpiece attri- buted, but clearly in mistake, to the much less powerful hand of Jean Goujon. So finely de- lineated was the expression of this blind face, that it looked as if it might have been moulded with the thumb in some soft material, rather than have been, as it was, scratched in stone — a mere play of shadows and skilful displacements of almost imperceptible volumes of air as in the famous babe's head by Donatello. Does that face still look down in the radiance of its age-long dream ? Do those sightless eyes still gaze inwardly upon the phantom vision which haunt the brains of poets and 176 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT seers in that peculiarly spiritual domain, which was Homer's and Milton's, to which the blind alone have the privilege of access ? Or has this matchless relic of mediaeval sensibility and artist's skill been destroyed by the German swine ? The experts sent to Reims to report on the state of the cathe- dral by the French Government, have not, so far, thought so small a matter of detail worthy of their attention. But nearly all the stained glass in Reims Cathedral has apparently gone. The window least damaged, but most made of in the official reports, was the amber-coloured rose-window at the western extremity of the nave, which could have been the most easily spared, for it was modern, the ancient glass which it replaced having been shattered by a hailstorm in the middle of the last century. So we need not join in the lamentations which are being raised in Paris over this minor misfortune. But all that wonderful series of kings and saints in priceless painted glass, which lined the upper parts of both naves, translucid tapestries, one might have held them to be, from the East, whence, in the wake of the crusades, their artistic inspiration may have come, have they been reduced to dust ? The dis- appearance from the face of the earth and from the memory of man of the entire German "kultur," and of the German people with it, would not compensate Humanity for such an irreparable loss. Sept. 22nd to Oct. 2nd. — These ten days have been painfully monotonous, filled up with waiting for the news which never comes of the outcome of the great battle, the decisive battle, as many of us think, IN FRANCE 177 which is now being waged on the north bank of the Aisne. The aspect of Paris remains but little changed. In the cafes the same chatterers continue their empty chatter, much as if no war had broken out at all. The "King of the Boulevard" has in no way altered the style of his witticisms, but though they are not lacking in esprit, they are out of place in view of the circumstances, and it is difficult any longer to be amused by them. The "literary man" in France is positively one of the toughest, most rhinoceros-hided creatures on earth. Nothing affects him. He still continues to look upon himself and his poor little literature as the things that most matter to the nation. Outside literature he views nothing seriously. B was complaining about the red-tape obstacles thrown in his way by the military officials when he sought to obtain his reinstatement in the army. Every- where he was asked for his birth certificate. "You misunderstood," said the "King," "it was not your birth certificate but your death certificate that they were so anxious to get." "What for?" asked B , with a stare. "Why, to settle the amount of your widow's pension." "But I haven't got a widow ! " replied B furiously. One may laugh at these absurdities, but it is pitiable to hear Frederic Masson making a literary speech over a poor young soldier's grave, and laying stress upon the fact that his name wasn't known; as if his not belonging to the French Academy made him an object of pity. Even more ridiculous has been the attitude of Anatole France, who after publish- ing a silly letter suggesting that France should M 178 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT extend the hand of friendship to Germany after the war, now writes to say that as "certain good people do not apparently like my style," he will- not, for the present, write any more, and addressing himself to the Government adds, "Make a soldier of me," as if any power on earth could make a soldier of this bumptious old numskull ! The Bois de Boulogne presents a curious aspect, the greater portion of it — all of it, in fact, that extends from the lower lake to Auteuil — having been converted into a vast paddock, or ranche, as the Parisians prefer to call it, in which graze thou- sands of cattle, destined for the provisioning of Paris in the event of a siege. S , the painter, was expressing great amusement at the Cafe" N because some of these cattle had made the mistake of drinking the water of the "Cascade." As this water is hot and ferruginous they promptly swelled up and died. But it was the idea of cows being watered at so essentially Parisian a spring as the "Cascade" which roused his hilarity. The people whom I meet on the boulevards are becoming more and more possessed with the idea which has struck me so persistently, that the war marks the beginning of a new epoch, which will see the final abolition and disappearance of most of the old ideas by which France, and more particularly Paris, have been dominated for two generations past. This applies not only to literature and the spoken word generally, but to every phase of life. The theatres will have to change their programmes ; the old problem play, in which only the mean — or at any rate the minor — instincts of humanity were brought to the surface, will have no more human IN FRANCE 179 significance for a long time to come. Art, too, will change. The intellectual void, the artistic futility and the emotional decadence of Wagner will be admitted. The whole philosophy of his art, as of many others, will have been exploded. We shall no longer mistake a vacuum for infinity. Painting will become less pretentious, less "snob," to use an expression which the French have adapted with a slight modification of meaning from the English. The change can only be for the better. In the opinion of S , the painter, the new movement in painting, which must inevitably result from the war, will be backwards in the direction of classicism. All the hybrid forms of impressionism and futurism, which have recently been poisoning the springs of art in Europe, were of German origin, or made possible by German encouragement. A similar effort to seek a higher and saner ideal is predicted by Maitre Chenu, the well-known barrister, to take place after the war in the practice of the French courts and the administration of French justice. Maitre Chenu is a former "baton- nier " of the Paris bar, and his opinion carries weight, though he is possibly influenced to some extent by his failure in the Calmette murder case to secure the condemnation of Madame Caillaux. He says that in future politics will not be allowed to influence the decision of juries, or the attitude of judges, and that in general the atmosphere of the Palais de Justice will be morally purified. My friend G L , who was formerly editor of the Petit Nigois, has arrived, after some exciting experiences, from Spa, where he was director of the Casino. He was a prisoner of the 180 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT Germans, or at any rate under a strict injunction from the German military authorities not to leave_; the town, but managed to escape in a motor-car - with a Belgian doctor, who had permission to pass through the German lines, and took him along as a surgical assistant. L has brought back a quantity of highly interesting documents, mostly original proclamations issued to the in- habitants of Spa by the German military com- mander, who coolly assumed the title of "Comman- der of the Army of the Meuse." They are of a terrifying nature, and threaten hangings and slaughter to all Belgians found guilty of interfering with the German operations. The wretched Mayor of Spa, a certain Baron de C , appears to have been completely dominated by the German invaders, for he issues piteous appeals to his fellow-citizens to treat the Germans with every possible con- sideration, and thus save the town from destruc- tion. His efforts seem to have had a result satisfactory to the Germans, for in one of his "notes" the Mayor says that he has the pleasure to inform the inhabitants of Spa that as a reward for their good conduct the German commander has permitted a distribution amongst them of bread and flour. L says that the bread they got was only just eatable, and caused widespread sick- ness. He showed me a specimen of it. It looked like underdone gingerbread, and was as hard as a brick. He said that when he left, a large portion of the population of Belgium had given up all hope of being rescued from their awful situation by the French, and were beginning to weaken a good deal in their resistance. The flight of the French IN FRANCE 181 Government from Paris to Bordeaux, of which the Germans were, naturally, very careful to inform them, produced a most deplorable effect. However, it is to be hoped that by this time they have begun to pluck up courage. He also told me, and this is information which he has conveyed to the French General Staff, who is quite grateful for it, that behind the German fighting line, to the north- west of France, and in Belgium itself, the Germans have practically no troops of any value. This would tend to show that their great effort has been made, and that they are incapable of any further offensive action aimed at Paris, that would have the slightest chance of success. He says that the atti- tude of the officers he came into contact with at the General Staff here was radiant, and they incidentally made the observation to him that the final victory of the French Army in the interminable battle of the Aisne might come much sooner than the public expected. In the meanwhile everybody is unutterably shocked by the news of the destruction of Reims Cathedral. There is no need to retain in the Eng- lish spelling of the word Reims an "h," that is of pure German origin and of no more use to the pro- nunciation than a uhlan's hiccough. Let us drop it in future. " Petrograd " was startling ; but it should be quite easy to write "Reims." The first bombardment of the cathedral was bad enough, but from what I have since heard the destruction of the building is now almost complete. There can be no longer any doubt that all the fine old glass has been destroyed. I have received a letter from L , in the 182 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT artillery regiment at , in which he says that 200 Prussian prisoners have just been marched through the town on their way to Vincennes, where they are "to be judged and condemned." G. L laughed over this phrase, which well depicts the frame of mind of the "little French soldier." I was coming home late last night with F T , when we met an English officer, evidently in difficulties. "Can you tell me," he asked, "where is the Grand Hotel?" "There in front of you." "Yes, but can you point out which is the actual building ? " This, too, typified the present state of mind of some of our own warriors. There can be no doubt whatever about the atroci- ties committed by the Germans. They have be- haved, as, of course, everybody who knows them knew they would, as cruel, heartless and cowardly beasts, without a spark of what other nations call honour, or human decency. G. L told me of one instance, which is very characteristic of their utter lack of humanity, of their immeasurable moral vileness. In a little village near Spa, occupied by the Germans, all the population, without any excep- tion (this was a precaution of prudence), were gathered at Mass in the church. The Germans, with the idea of starting a massacre, fired off some shots, and then seized ten of the male inhabitants as they were leaving the church, and said that unless they indicated the one who fired, the whole ten would be shot at once. Of course, this was an impossible order to obey. Thereupon the cure\ quite a young man, came out of the church, where he had been celebrating Mass, and said simply : "It was I who fired the shot ! " Anvbodv but Germans IN FRANCE 183 would have respected this splendid act of heroism, knowing that what the priest said was not and could not be true, and that he was offering to throw away his life in order to save ten innocent members of his flock. But no ; the Germans shot him. These pagan swine shot this Christian hero. A viler murder never before stained human consciences. And yet — and this is so shocking about it — we who know the Germans, at least as well as Lord Haldane, know and always knew that it is just like them to have done it. In one of the proclamations brought back from Spa by G. L , and signed by the German com- mander, the inhabitants are actually asked to spy upon and hand over to the military authorities for immediate execution those of their own compatriots whom they suspect of an inclination to oppose the operations of the German Army. That again is an idea the utter vileness of which is wholly modern German. TENTH WEEK Oct. 3rd to Oct. gth. — The monotony continues, and the so-called battle of the Aisne still remains undecided. To-day (9th) there seems very little doubt that Antwerp will fall ; perhaps already has fallen ; in which case I wonder whether the com- munications with England across the Channel will be affected or not. L , whom I saw yesterday at Fontenay-sous-Bois, tells me that a certain General has been removed from his post on account of the extraordinary German sympathies which he thought proper to air. For instance, he made it his special duty to ascertain personally whether the coffee served out to the German prisoners was sufficiently hot, and when he found that it was not quite piping hot, he punished the French soldier who had made it; but he showed no such solicitude with regard to the coffee served out to his own men. L W gave me another instance, which, if true, is cer- tainly very peculiar. A number of German women prisoners, dressed in the Red Cross uniform, were brought in through Fontenay, accused of dispatch- ing the French wounded committed to their care by giving them surreptitious doses of chloroform. They were being conveyed to St. Lazare female prison to await their trial by court-martial The General gave strict orders that the soldiers were not 184 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT 185 to shout at them as they passed by ; but the exuber- ance of the French soldier could not in every case be restrained, and there were a few shouts of "A mort ! A mort ! " but otherwise no demonstration. The General inflicted a month's imprisonment on each soldier found guilty of having shouted. However, the troops seem to derive some compen- satory satisfaction from the fact, which they believe to be true, that when these German women arrived at St. Lazare, which is under the direction of nuns, the Superior of the Sisterhood forced them to take off their white Red Cross caps, which she said they were unworthy to wear. I have just spent three days at Champrosay, where I went with the intention of looking up my old hosts the L s, and seeing whether the forest of Senart has an ample supply of mush- rooms this year. On Monday, the 5th, I invited L , Madame L , his little boy Louis, and Madame F , who now keeps the cafe as L 's successor, to walk with me across the forest to Brunoy, and there lunch. On our way, when we had reached the Carrefour des Dames, not far from the Chene Prieur, Madame L spied an old woman named Isabelle Cocot gathering wood, and was surprised to see her suddenly disappear. I was walking along, holding an umbrella behind me with the steel ferrule protruding above the top of my hat. Just as Madame Cocot came in sight I had jumped a ditch to look at a "cep," a tube mushroom, which was on the other side of it. To do this I had shifted the umbrella across my arm. A moment afterwards two men in shirt- sleeves appeared at the extreme end of the 186 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT avenue, and to amuse little Louis, I aimed at them with the umbrella, pretending they were Prussians. They too disappeared. We went quietly on, lunched at the Pyramide, and walked back again with a fine "bag" of mushrooms, arriving home about seven in the evening to find that the whole countryside was in a state of wild excitement. Madame Cocot, who is known as the "bedotte," because she fulfils the functions of beadle at the little church of Champrosay, immortalised by Alphonse Daudet in La Petite Paroisse, had declared to the gendarmerie that she had seen about eight uhlans in the neighbourhood of the Chene Prieur, who had broken away just as she had caught sight of them. They wore spiked helmets and carried rifles "en bandouliere." Very much frightened, she had informed two "cantonniers " of what she had seen, and they, cautiously advancing up the avenue, had been spotted by one of the uhlans who instantly dropping on his knee had aimed at them as if about to fire, whereupon they bolted. Madame Cocot is eighty-four and has poor sight. There is not the slightest doubt that the uhlans she saw mainly consisted of my felt hat with the point of the umbrella sticking up over the top of it ; but, nevertheless, by the time we got back, thirty gendarmes had been summoned to Champrosay from all the districts between Corbeil and Villeneuve St. Georges; every well-disposed person possessing a horse and a gun had been rallied to a general scour of the country, the unfor- tunate gendarmes were obliged to spend the whole night in the forest firing blank cartridge every few minutes to scare the uhlans, and the next day a IN FRANCE 187 detachment of troops on motor-cycles arrived from Villeneuve to ransack the forest in every direction. The gendarmes read us, in the morning, Madame Cocot's deposition. They wore a doleful look, for they have not done with their night watches in the forest. I questioned Madame Cocot, but she failed to recognise me, though she was of opinion that as far as it was possible to distinguish colours in the distance, the uhlans wore dark clothes. Half the population is shrieking with laughter over the adventure and pointing to us as "les uhlans," the other half still believes in the possibility of stray uhlans being in the forest, and credits a report that four were arrested, of whom one subsequently escaped. We cannot decide which of us it was who "escaped." The story of the night siege of the forest of Senart will be a favourite topic in Alphonse Daudet's country for many a day. The three days I spent at Champrosay were glorious autumn days with all the forest tints ablaze, and an exquisite blue mist in the distant perspective of the river. It was impossible not to be affected by the rare calm and beauty of the place where a year ago I spent many happy months, and where, fifteen years ago, I had so often enjoyed the charming hospitality of Alphonse Daudet. But it seemed cruelly selfish at moments to be even able to enjoy the sunshine with this wicked war going on, and not so very far off either, for we heard the dull boom of cannonading from the north-west till sometime after dark, though I can hardly believe that this came from the theatre of war. L brought out his best wine, and worked hard to make us all gay ; indeed, the French are wonderful 188 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT in the way they manage to keep up their spirits, with friends and relations falling all around them. In the neighbouring village of Draveil, out of a population of three hundred, eighty have been killed or wounded. But as the lunch wore on I became overwhelmed with an intense and bitter sadness. Had I been alone I should have wept like a child. In the afternoon a young wounded soldier, a native of the neighbouring village of Ris-Orangis, came into the cafe" at the side of the station and claimed acquaintance with the "patron," who, however, failed to recognise him. It must be singularly depressing to have come thus from the wars with an honourable wound, and owing to a ragged uniform, a week's beard, and the altered haggard look which all these soldiers have who have been at the front and witnessed the awful scenes of carnage, and are still dazed by the un- imaginable din of the heavy artillery and the con- cussion of the exploding shells, to be treated as potential "spongers," or impostors, by the "bistro," or cafe" proprietor, who in peaceful times welcomed you with the broad smile of recognition extended to the assiduous customer. I have seen more than one instance of this recently, and it struck me as being both laughable and pathetic. However, the young hero quickly attracted attention, and in a toneless far-away voice like an echo, or the voice of the stone-deaf, he answered the eager questions put to him, but, oddly enough, not at all to the satisfaction of his listeners. "The Germans never fight with the bayonet?" asked one. "Don't you believe it," came the far-off reply. "He fights with IN FRANCE 189 the bayonet, and he fights deucedly well with the bayonet. He's a great soldier is the German. And, oh ! what an army they've got ! That is an army. And their big artillery. Wheu-uh ! We've nothing to equal that. When an ' obus percuteur ' [per- cussion shell] drops on the roadway it makes a hole two meters long and eight meters wide, enough to bury four dead horses in, and when it drops in a ' section ' [detachment of men], wheu-uh ! " "But the German fires from the hip and can't aim ? " "Can't aim? You bet he can aim — aim as well as any of us ; and he doesn't fire from the hip, but from the shoulder, just as we do." "But the Lebel is lighter and a better rifle than the German ? " " Not a bit of it. Theirs is much better than ours and lighter. It has a better sight and a better chargeur, or loader. The German chargeur is a continuous band holding twenty-four cartridges, 1 and it goes tic-tic-tic like that; moreover, the empty cartridge is automatically thrown out without the soldier having to pay any attention to it, which is not the case with our rifle; besides which the French can only load his magazine with four cartridges at a time, after which he has to reach with his hand for a new supply." "They are savages, aren't they, the German soldiers?" "I won't say that the Prussians are not, but the Bavarians — the Bavarians would, many of them, have been only too willing to have come over and fought on our side. We fraternised whenever we met, poor dear fellows (' les pauvres cruris ') ; but as for the 1 The French military experts claim that this apparent advan- tage is really a failing, for it encourages indiscriminate firing without proper aim. 190 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT Prussians, I grant you, the Prussians. And, oh ! the mischief they've wrought. You have no idea. You can't have an idea unless you've seen it. Those lovely little towns all destroyed. The whole north laid waste. There was one little town I shall never forget; we passed it first of all on our retreating march — une si gentille, une si jolie petite ville — " and the young soldier brought his hands together as if he were caressing the cheek of some pretty little maiden; "and on our way back, oh, what a sight, all gone, nothing at all, not a wall standing — une si jolie petite ville!" "Do you think the Germans will be coming back again?" I inquired. He did not answer this question till I repeated it ; perhaps he had not heard it. Then he said wearily : "Nous les avons tourn^s " (We have turned them). After which he slowly dragged him- self away, having rather solemnly shaken hands with us all with a sad and half-benedictory smile, no doubt to repeat the same information at the next cafe. As soon as he was out of hearing, the "bistro" exclaimed furiously: "There goes a young soldier who knows nothing of what is going on at the war ! " ELEVENTH WEEK Oct. loth. — The news that Antwerp has fallen, as we suspected must be the case yesterday from certain mysterious blanks left in the papers by the blue pencil of the censor, produced an undoubtedly painful impression on the minds of Parisians, which have nevertheless been so saturated with horrors and inhuman sensations as to be somewhat dulled, and this is the explanation of what might otherwise seem to be callousness. What the ulti- mate effect of this event may be cannot, of course, be gauged now. The principal fear is that if the Belgian army with its British reinforcements has not succeeded in quitting the town, the Germans will be able to strengthen their right wing on the Aisne with about 160,000 men. The weather is turning cold, and the need of warm clothing is beginning to make itself felt. It is impossible to receive any package from Nice, the P.L.iM. refusing to forward even "colis pos- taux," unless they are addressed to a soldier or sailor on active service. According to the talk on the boulevard, it was M. Poincare's first idea, to which the Ministerial Council agreed, to proclaim Paris "an open place," which meant surrendering it without resistance, and that it was only on the energetic protestation of 191 192 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT General Galli^ni that this plan was abandoned in favour of the Government's departure to Bordeaux. At Bordeaux, it is said, the Ministers who attend"! seriously to the nation's business, are Viviani, Delcasse" and Ribot. The others give themselves up to the gastronomic pleasures for which Bor- deaux is famous. My informant is Henri de C , whose narrative must, of course, be taken with a grain of salt, though he has, I must admit, good sources of information. Oct. nth. — The news which gives the details of the surrender of Antwerp was more favourable than we could have hoped for, and on the French left wing the Allies seemed to have done very well. I lunched at the Pepiniere, and towards the close of the meal a dull noise was heard like the falling of a hundred of bricks. A man sitting next to me said at once with great assurance that that was a "Taube." I doubted it, but soon a rush of people to the street at the corner brought us all out to look, and there, sure enough, in the Rue du Rocher — a few yards off — a bomb had fallen. It had done no damage, only making a fan-shaped mark of dirty yellow against the wall of the house on the left of the street, and a small indentation in the centre of the cobbled roadway. Evidently the German aviator's idea had been to hit the St. Lazare railway station, in which he had been un- successful. The proprietress of the Restaurant Pepiniere said indignantly that orders should be given to prevent any aeroplane coming anywhere near Paris. I tried to comfort her by means of a horrible pun which occurred to me at the moment : IN FRANCE 193 "Les obus allemands sont encore moins dangereux que n'etaient les autobus parisiens. lis tuent moins de monde." But here, as it turned out, I was wrong, for twenty bombs were dropped over Paris this afternoon, killing three, or as it is variously reported, four people, and wounding twenty others. The crowd in the Rue Rocher was really comic, picking up all kinds of muck in the street and care- fully smelling it to ascertain whether it might be a vestige of the bomb which could be kept or sold as a souvenir. This shows how far we still are in Paris from all real contact with the horrors of the war. In the evening, after the curfew, which in Paris is at nine-thirty for the restaurants, U took me round to a so-called English hotel where he wanted, he said, to meet and converse with some English soldiers. There was only one English officer there, but a very offensive person professing to be an American, described how he got through to the firing-line at Reims and elsewhere, mainly owing to the fact that he had no passport or papers of identification. There was a dispute at the end of the evening ; one of the gang, who pretended to be a British Jew, getting his face smacked. It was a fishy business on the whole. The officer behaved well, but I am convinced that the American, who boasted of having been twice arrested as a spy, and released because no one could find out who he was, no doubt was really a spy. It stands to reason that the Germans, being no longer able to employ Germans or Austrians, or any of the belligerent nationalities for spy purposes, N 194 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT would fall back for the purpose on the so-called "bum" American, of which this was a "museum specimen." -*_ Oct. 12th. — My little joke about the autobus and the obus has turned out to be not so paradoxical after all. Yesterday afternoon, within a stone's throw of my hotel a tram-car ran into another tram- car, owing to the mistake of a new conductor who had failed to understand his instructions, with the result that three passers-by on the pavement were killed and a number of passengers wounded — the same number of casualties as that scored by the twenty German bombs ! Another "Taube" appeared this morning over Paris, passing above the hotel, but was chased away by a French aeroplane before it could do any damage. An additional reason for General B 's removal from the command of the fortress of Vincennes is, I am told on good authority, that his brother-in- law has turned out to be a German spy. This may account for the General's German sympathies so strangely exercised to the disadvantage of his own troops, described to me by L W . Oct. 13th. — I started off in the afternoon to the Bastille with the intention of taking the five o'clock train for Fontenay. Having a little time to spare I looked in vain for that extraordinarv old passage, the Passage des Ecouffes, which used to connect the Rue des Rosiers with the street at the back ; but it appears to have been done away with. It was almost entirely dark and vaulted, one of the most IN FRANCE 195 picturesque bits of old Paris still remaining two years ago. I have an idea that very little of old Paris will long survive the war. Another sign of the old order changing ! The present characteristic of the war is that everybody seems to be perfectly satisfied and self- confident on all sides. English, French, Germans, Russians and Austrians, are equally sure that they are doing very well, and must win in the long run. Only the Belgians look blue ! On reaching the Bastille the crowd was much excited by the appearance of a biplane, carrying apparently no flag and beating up against the wind from the east. It arrived over the Bastille column and hovered about as if seeking for some particular spot below, and the most likely object we thought would be the Vincennes railway station, which flanks the Place de la Bastille. For we were all convinced that it was a German aeroplane and were confirmed in this idea by the appearance on the eastern horizon of another aeroplane seemingly in hot pursuit of the first one, and following, in any case, exactly the same course. Presently the first aeroplane turned, and going now with the wind fled with amazing speed in the direction whence it had come, disappearing and reappearing through the low-hanging clouds. I did not wait to see the result of this apparent air chase for fear of missing the train, and it was not quite certain that this was a German aeroplane. The loss of Lille once again is causing a certain amount of trepidation among the public here, and fears are again being pretty widely expressed that the Germans may return to the neighbourhood of 196 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT Paris. Miss H , who is working at the agency which Cox's Bank have set up here, and constantly sees a number of English officers coming in" and out, heard one of them whisper that things were going badly. He had just returned from the front. She also heard one of the Indian officers say that when the contingent left Bombay none of them had any knowledge of where they were being sent to. Oct. 14th. — The papers all declare officially this morning that the only aeroplanes that flew over Paris yesterday were French. But I have my private doubts as to the nationality of the Bastille one. If it was French its movements and those of the aeroplane that pursued it were singularly calcu- lated to inspire panic among the population. Two young Belgian soldiers came into the Cafe C this morning accompanied by a good-natured greyhound. One of the soldiers turned out to be a well-known revueiste, and he told us how he kept up the spirits of his comrades by composing comic topical songs dealing with the war in the best music-hall style. Their dog had been with them all through the campaign — they had been in half-a- dozen of the bloodiest engagements— and had never turned a hair. He had even received a slight wound to his tail from shrapnel. One of the soldiers told us that in the Belgian army the mitrailleuses are drawn by the well-known Belgian traction dogs who are a mixture of all types but with a predominance of the Danish. He said they did wonders and, pulled by them, the mitrailleuse went anywhere. They were quite fearless, cared nothing for splin- IN FRANCE 197 tering shells, and you could fire off a gun in their ears without startling them. To-night there was a good deal of depression in Paris, owing to the aggravating curtness of the official communiques, which tell nothing. But P , who has just come back from Creil, says that French's base is near Abbeville — an English soldier on his way there told him this — that important developments may be expected on the extreme left wing before long, and that the situation is quite favourable to the Allies. Oct. 15th. — The news this morning is more satis- factory than anything that we have heard for a long time. The New York Herald is allowed to print a letter from its special correspondent at Boulogne, announcing that, in consequence of what may be described as a brilliant French and British victory, General von Kluck has been foiled in his attempt to envelop the French left, and that the retreat of the whole German line must now surely, if slowly, happen. If this be fully true, it means that the siege of Paris is now within sight of being raised; for, though the Germans are chaffed here and in England for describing their present opera- tions as "vor Paris" and "urn Paris," which are the terms used for a siege, this is nevertheless what it has practically amounted to. What resist- ance the Paris forts could have made I do not know, nor do I know anybody who does ; but the general impression produced by the rapid fall of all the other French and Belgian forts which the Germans have besieged so far, using, it is believed, their famous '42 cm. mortar (or didn't they?), is that 198 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT the resistance could not have been a prolonged one. I went this morning to the to see , and found him very busy. I reminded him of what he said two years ago, that if the French went to war with Germany the Germans would simply walk over them, and he smiled, and said, "Yes, if it hadn't been for us, they would not have had the smallest chance. The Germans have failed owing: to a series of political miscalculations. They thought that, when the war began, England would be too busy quelling a rebellion in Ireland to come to the assistance of France. They counted on a rebellion in India and in South Africa, on Italy joining in with her two allies, and on English indifference to what might happen to Belgium. If Germany had had the sense to leave Belgium alone, and invade France without violating Belgian neutrality, she might have had things her own way, for it is not certain that in that case England would have interfered. England might have joined in ; but then also she might not. She was not under any treaty obligation to do so." Oct. \6ih. — I was saddened to-day by reading of the death from wounds received in the fighting on the Aisne of Alec Carter, the famous steeplechase jockey. The French papers inaccurately state that Alec Carter's presence in the French Army, in which he held the rank of second lieutenant, was due to his having opted for French nationality when he came of age. In point of fact, Alec Carter was a Frenchman by nationality, whether he liked it or not, though in every other respect a pure-blooded IN FRANCE 199 and very typical Englishman. He was, if it be not too rude to say so, a "victim" of the law adopted in France in the early 'nineties which imposed French nationality on any person born in France of a father also born in France. This was the case with Alec Carter, the descendant of a long- line of Carters, who have been jockeys and trainers at Chantilly for generations. The Carter family, in fact, belonged to what might be called the aris- tocracy of the racing colony at Chantilly, and was, indeed, at the head of it, to such an extent that, previous to the very unnecessary creation of a vice- consulate at Chantilly, it was to the chief of the clan Carter that the local authorities would address them- selves, when, as often happened, a clash took place between French administrative methods and the habits and customs of the British jockey. The in- fluence of "Mr." Carter was invariably sufficient to adjust these difficulties. It had been originally intended to bring up Alec to some profession, but at the age of thirteen he violently rebelled against this scheme, and insisted on being a jockey. Before he was fourteen he was already famous, and making "pots" of money for his father, to whom he was apprenticed ; and at that age he was an angelically pretty child, with a face like one of Correggio's cherubs. I can see him now, with the faultless beauty of his infantine face of the pure English type, sitting outside a restaurant frequented by English jockeys in the Boulevard Denain just opposite the northern rail- way station — he might have been thirteen — being solemnly entertained to dinner by little Stern, who was not two years older than himself. That he 200 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT should have become the morganatic husband of E d'A , who must have been old enough to be his mother, is one of those psychological mysteries which it is almost impossible to solve. Perhaps he was one of those pure and serene spirits (he looked it) that never really grow up, who are destined to die early and sublimely, and to whom the maternal embrace and care are a lifelong neces- sity, and all they really seek from the devotion of a woman. TWELFTH WEEK Oct. ijth. — There was a crowd of well-dressed Antwerp refugees seated outside the cafe at the corner of the Rue Jean Jacques Rousseau this morning, and when they had strolled off, very unconcernedly as it seemed to me, led by a young man with a briar pipe, and with the rear brought up by a little boy merrily swinging a bundle of umbrellas, the proprietress of the cafe threw up her arms and cried out to me on the horror of their situation. Homeless, and obliged to leave every- thing behind them ! Mon Dieu, mon Dieu ! Not knowing whither to go! "And are they penni- less?" I inquired. But the Frenchwoman evaded this question. "It is too awful to contemplate," she insisted. "What a misfortune, what a catas- trophe ! " "And no money?" I asked again. And as the proprietress still turned a deaf ear to this query, I repeated it with emphasis, drawing from her the rather testy reply, "Of course they've money. They would not have been so stupid as to leave their money behind. That would have been the ' comble.' " And I noticed that she had charged them the full price for their "consommations," which were not cheap. Oct. 18th. — The news from the region of the Aisne gets better every day, and the French left 201 202 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT seems to have been definitely victorious, thanks in a large measure to the new British howitzers which have recently appeared on the scene. The "man in the cafe," who in Paris corresponds to what in England they call the "man in the street," still fails to do full justice to the brilliant work accom- plished by the British Army, and does not under- stand at all that Paris was saved by the British Navy. But this is the literal fact, which I had to explain to-day to G C , the Spanish writer, who coolly remarked at the Cafe C to-day that our fleet had done "tres peu." He was a little astonished when I described to him the perfect mastery of the sea maintained by the fleet, which had enabled the long procession of troopships to come over from Southampton to Le Havre night and day with the same perfect security as if they were autobuses travelling along the Paris boule- vard, which this wonderful seaway, brilliantly lit up as it was at night, no little resembled. It was these reinforcements that stemmed the German onslaughts and prevented them from taking Paris, and the capture of Paris would have been, in spite of what some Frenchmen say to the contrary, a fatal blow to the French Army and to the French nation. In the afternoon I went out to Neuilly to see B 's brother, the doctor, who, as a captain of artillery, was shot in the thigh in the Argonne, probably by a French bullet, for he received his wound while his men were firing at a German aeroplane. Conversation arose among the captain's visitors as to how long the war was likely to last. One IN FRANCE 203 lady professed to know that when General French had been asked this question he had replied, "It may last six months or fifteen years." This saved me ; for I had shocked the others a good deal by pointing out, with apologies for raising memories of "battles long ago," that it had taken Europe fifteen years to get the better of Napoleon. Wars, of course, were less ruinous then than now; but it would surely be a mistake to suppose that such a huge war machine as that of the " Austro-Boches," based upon a population of 120,000,000, covering practically the whole of Central Europe, could be crushed in a day. Just as it took three wars to completely beat Napoleon, it seemed likely to me that the allied enemies would require to be dealt with "en trois temps." The first war, which would be undecisive, but unfavourable to Germany and Austria, might practically come to an end at the approach of winter. Then in the spring there would be another equally desperate war, which would pin the enemy to the wall, and finally a third "short, sharp " war, with perhaps a few new belligerent elements thrown in to bring him to sue uncondi- tionally for peace. The captain thought that the Germans were certain to be beaten, because they are too disseminated. He criticised the French aeroplane service at the beginning of operations. "The German aeroplanes," he said, "were con- stantly over us, getting our positions, and we were all the time longing for a French aeroplane to appear to get theirs, but it never did, so that we were placed at a real disadvantage." The medical service also seems to have been defective. The Captain was eight days in a train without his thigh 204 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT being re-dressed, with the result that gangrene set in, and he was only saved by being able to enter, the hospital where he now is, the chief surgeon of which is a personal friend in whom he has confidence. Oct. igth. — I met S , the dramatic author, on the boulevard this afternoon. He said that one of his friends, who is a director at the General Post Office, had under his eyes the first proof of Poin- care's proclamation to the French people when the Government fled to Bordeaux. It contained this extraordinary passage : "We leave Paris under the safeguard of the Germans." He thinks that the Republic will never recover from the moral effect of the cowardice displayed by its chiefs. That Madame Poincare should have left Paris is an addi- tional scandal, for she was President of the Red Cross Society, and incurred no danger in stopping. He said that as a result of Kitchener's protest against the lack of support accorded to the British Expeditionary Force at the commencement of the war, no less than 171 French generals were relieved of their commands, and a certain proportion of them — he said about sixty — put under arrest. Marshal French, after he had been literally betrayed by two generals, telegraphed to Kitchener that the French did not seem inclined to defend themselves, and that the only chance of preventing the entire British force from being overwhelmed by the Germans was to transport it to Belgium, where it could co-operate with the Belgian Army; that this would be consistent with the initial inspiration of the British plan of campaign, which was not so IN FRANCE 205 much to defend France as to protect the neutrality of Belgium. Kitchener subsequently sent a tele- gram to French (after he had visited Joffre) to return to the firing line. D T , of the D N , whom I met later in the day, con- firmed the whole of this story, as being at any rate consistent with information which he had obtained from British military sources. De C 's former trainer was with him this afternoon, a Frenchman, and he told us that Lane, the son of Tom Lane the famous flat-race jockey, and himself a jockey ranking with the best, had been shot as a prisoner by the Germans, probably for insubordination. I can remember this unfor- tunate youth as a little lad, not more than eight or nine, and very diminutive, but with a pretty little English face. Even then he was not "com- mode," but arrogant like his father, who, in spite of being unable to read or write, was bumptiousness incarnate. I had had occasion to visit the Lanes at their cottage at Chantilly, and on leaving tapped the boy gently on the cheek, a paternal gesture which in France is more or less expected of you, as a visitor, when children make their appearance. He immediately put up his fists as if to fight and frowned most indignantly, much to the delight of his father, who looked upon him as a chip of the old block. The shadow of the end ! Oct. 20th to Oct. 23rd. — These three days have been wholly uneventful. A battle has been raging between the Allies and the Germans for the posses- sion of the road to Calais, which is still, apparently, undecided. There is again a good deal of uneasi- 206 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT ness in Paris, and though there are no more 'Tauben " for the present, the faint sound of can- nonading which wafts over to us from the neigh- bourhood, presumably, of Compiegne does not help to reassure people. It is felt that the Germans are still a great deal too near, though exactly how near they are the official communications do not tell us. The consequence is that another exodus is begin- ning on almost as large a scale, so I am assured, as that which took place in the early days of last month. The train to Nice via Marseilles, which leaves at 8.5 in the evening, has had to be doubled, and F T , who wanted to take it in order to get to Belfort, was unable to do so, owing- to the lack of even standing room. A big offensive movement by the French is being prepared in the east, probably in the neighbourhood of Belfort, with the object, no doubt, of drawing off some of the German forces which are pressing so hardly on the French left. In a letter which I received from L at F , he says that a number of officers are leaving there to take part in the siege of Metz ! The Marseille express was full in consequence of this despatch of troops, but it is also a fact that the Parisians are crowding off to the south, in the fear of another close investment of Paris by the Germans. Old G W is full of pessimism, but I think this must be partially due to the intense disgust he feels at not being allowed to get any- where near the fighting lines. He says that the English artists are very unfairly treated as com- pared with the French by both the French and the British military authorities. This 23rd of October has been a singularly warm IN FRANCE 207 and lovely autumn day, and I have rarely seen the boulevard look more charming, with the glint of the fresh, soft sunshine on the gold of the shop signs and the still lingering green of the trees. A few shops that had been closed at the beginning of the war are now shyly opening again. The shutters of a great many of the principal restaurants are still up, however. The Cafe Americain, which has presented a painful whitewashed appearance, giving it the look of a bankrupt undertaker's estab- lishment, has reopened its doors, but apparently only to admit workmen, who are engaged in refit- ting the entire place. The "Grand U" is still closed ; so is the " Bceuf a la Mode " in the Palais Royal, and the "Pied de Mouton " at the Central Markets. Of course, the Cafe" Viennois is both closed and carefully boarded up. Underwood's has now a show-window again, but business is only transacted on the first floor. One or two of the Duval establishments which had been closed have restarted business, but only two or three of them, in favoured spots, seem to attract the usual custom. Alexandre Duval still makes the daily round of his "bouillons," dressed, as ever, to the nines, and wearing now a bright brown variation of his famous low-crowned beaver. Fancy a khaki beaver ! Only the "consomme gentilhomme " could have hit upon that. At the corner of the boulevard where the Cafe" Anglais formerly stood a huge pile of build- ings was in course of construction. A German jeweller named Mielle, whose shop is at the opposite corner, owned this enterprise. He fled on the first day of mobilisation, and now the buildings have, I understand, been put under an official embargo. 208 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT They present a very melancholy spectacle. Many of the closed shops are used by the hawkers of picture post-cards for the exhibition of their wares, which they poise on the ribs of the iron shutters. The Paris caricaturists cannot be congratulated on their efforts. Many of their designs are not only filthy, but silly, much more in the German than the French taste, one would have thought. Pierre Veber has been very busy. The only one of his drawings which contains any successful humour is that which represents an excited little Napoleon dancing on his own tombstone at the Invalides, and shouting "Vive l'Angleterre ! " Owing to the scarcity of certain kinds of provisions, the barrow people, or "marchand de quatre saisons," are allowed much more license by the police than was normally the case. They literally block the pave- ments, or rather cause them to be blocked by the crowds of customers they attract, in the Faubourg St. Honore and the Rue de Rivoli, opposite the Hotel de Ville, and this goes on most of the day. Outdoor markets of this description are held all over the town An unusual sight is the number of barrows on which fresh butter is hawked. Salt, too, of a coarse grain and of a dull yellowish colour, is sold in the streets at twenty centimes the half- kilo, and in the early morning you will meet dulcet-voiced girls crying out, "Un sou, la belle sardine ! " Fruit is exceptionally plentiful and cheap, and the street-barrows are loaded with mag- nificent duchesse pears and apples, among the latter the "beurre hardi " and the "calville" being the most common, all dessert fruit of the best quality. The newsboys are forbidden to call out the names IN FRANCE 209 of the newspapers, but their doing so is tolerated by the police, on condition of their not shouting too loud. If Paris is darker than before the war at night-time, this is due to the number of shops that are closed, not to any special measures, and people who come over from London tell me that there, after dark, the almost total obscurity into which the city is thrown produces a war atmosphere — the sense of an imminent attack — far beyond any such impression in Paris. Owing to the official suppression this year of the shooting season, there is one, and only one, customary item lacking from the Parisian table, and that is game. But a certain amount of game is nevertheless sold at the Halles — pheasants and partridges from England and hares from Holland — and there is one restaurant close to the markets, the "Ville de Rouen," where civet de lievre, and very excellent too, is served every day; but I know of no other in Paris where it can be obtained. The shops, of course, are rilled with articles needed or likely to prove useful in the war. The French pretty generally wear full mourning for their dead relations killed "on the field of honour," so that the dressmakers have notices in their win- dows calling attention to the promptitude with which mourning can be delivered; and most of the cheaper jewellers' shops are plentifully stocked with brooches and pins and other trinkets made of black beads, bog oak and jet. The social life in Paris is wholly suspended. Traffic, moreover, is so greatly reduced that the rumble of the underground "metro" is now faintly audible in the streets throughout the day. THIRTEENTH WEEK Oct. 2-ji/*. — Another glorious autumn day. At the hotel a Mr. A B introduced himself to me. He is a Quaker, and has come over with young Mr. C and a Territorial colonel with an ambulance equipped by the Society of Friends, and anticipates difficulty in dealing with the French military authorities, who seem to be somewhat jealous of these private hospital enterprises. The party have come from Calais, and have, of course, met many British officers who have been at the front and conversed with them. B has picked up the idea that only fresh troops who have never been in action can be got to charge under heavy shell fire in modern battles. The soldiers, he says, who have once been through this experience decline to face it again. The belief in London is that it was on Churchill's sole initiative that British marines were sent over to prevent the immediate surrender of Antwerp. Most of these men, who had only just begun their training and were raw recruits, were so ignorant of their business that it was not until they got on board the ship which was to bring them across the Channel that they learned how to fix bayonets. Churchill's move (apparently disapproved of by the British Admir- alty) is looked on by his friends as good politics, 210 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT 211 although it may have been farcical as an act of warfare. There was a chance that, had the English not made this show of coming to the assistance of the Belgians, their King, disheartened, would have listened to the German overtures to patch up some kind of conditions of peace. This would have laid open to the Germans the route to Calais, which the Allies were not then ready to defend. According to the Territorial colonel, Lloyd George is not having much success with his recruiting campaign in Wales, for the Welshmen are hanging back. He said that this war will be the grave of a great many military reputations, principally among the regimental commanders. The line held by the Allies on the extreme left is beginning to waver in places. S , the dramatic author, says, on the authority of one of his friends, who is at the Prefecture, and whose special business it is to "relever l'etat," otherwise to take official cognisance of the number of foreign troops that enter France, that 12,000 Japanese troops arrived two days ago at Marseilles, with heavy Japanese artillery, and have been sent to reinforce the left wing. This same official was despatched at the time to "relever l'etat" of the Indian troops that arrived at Marseilles, so that he cannot be suspected of confusing the Japanese with the Indians. In these parlous times it is difficult to know what to believe. B pooh-poohs the story on the ground that the use of Japanese troops by Great Britain in Europe would displease the Americans, a contingency which the British Go- vernment would not incur the risk of at the pre- sent juncture of affairs. I suggested that the less 212 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT Great Britain bothered her head about American opinion the better, but B disagreed. Oct. 25th.— There was a great crowd struggling to get into Notre Dame des Victoires this afternoon, in which there was no standing room, and it rilled all the large open space in front of the church. Everybody present almost was in black, and it was an affecting sight. The question has more than once been raised whether this war is causing a religious revival in France or not. My own opinion is that the majority of the French are not at heart a religious people, though many are undoubtedly superstitious, and I do not think that their present religious fervour is more than a passing phase. It is a case of "when the Devil was ill, the Devil a saint was he," etc. On the other hand the persecu- tion of the Church, which was so vigorously carried on previous to the war by the Government, inspired by freemasons and jealous Jews, will have no success with the public in future. It is admitted on all sides that the cures have behaved splendidly at the front, not only in the exercise of their func- tions as priests, but as soldiers. There is a story of one priest, serving as a sergeant, rallying and lead- ing on his men with wonderful heroism, shout- ing to them: "Come on, come on. Death- is nothing. Je vous fous l'absolution a tous ! " It is when the Catholic priest, himself essentially democratic, strikes in a phrase like this at the essence of things that he carries his democratic French hearers with him. I am disposed to think, with all due respect to Rome, that the origin of the quarrel between the French people and their religion IN FRANCE 213 is theo-geological. It is based upon a misapprehen- sion as to the real composition of the rock of Peter. The spiritual elements of that rock, in so far as they are eternal, consist of essentials. It is only the non- essentials that change, and it is right that they should. But the heads of the Catholic Church have not sufficiently understood this. They have sought to give an eternal value to merely accessory and non-essential details. That is why they have so often foolishly and vainly attempted to stem the rising tide of scientific research, which itself pos- sesses none of the attributes of eternal stability or even of the essential. The rock of Peter is made up of a far purer and more enduring granite than what they take it to be. Even the admirable sym- bolism of the Catholic Church would be all the better if it could adapt itself to the needs of the modern imagination. Why should it not? I am inclined to think that in the long run it will ; and that the Church, when once again in agreement with its sons all the world over, France included, as to the eternal essentials of the Christian belief and cult, will find its old power and authority come back to it. For the present "religion" in France seems to be mainly confined to the superstitious and to those primitive souls who are impressed by ceremonial and other physical externals. Oct. 26th.— The weather continues remarkably fine, and it is almost as warm as in summer. I went over to the Latin Quarter this afternoon, and found it very deserted. The Luxembourg Garden is still a mass of flowers, but they are beginning to look a little autumn-sodden and sad. The strong 214 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT scent of the fallen chestnut leaves fills the air. The long tennis-court, which used to be so noisy with eager players, is now inactive. The same old fogies, however, are still at their interminable games of croquet. A few tumbling roses cling to the bushes in the rosary. As many love-making couples as ever are to be met with in the leaf-strewn avenues, and there are children swimming boats in the ponds, but the atmosphere on the whole is depressed and solitary. The streets are even more closed up and forlorn than in the centre of the city. Most of the hotels, where the students are accus- tomed to congregate, appeared to be shut up, which is perhaps not so unusual at this time of the year, for the schools have not yet opened, but none the less, even during the vacation they used to have a fair number of customers, foreign savants, who came to visit the libraries, and tourists attracted by the tranquillity and relative cheapness of the "quarter." Oct. 28th. — I took B and C to see Cap- tain B at the Military Hospital in Neuilly. There is no doubt that the medical department of the French Army at the front is deficient in many things. We heard of one unfortunate soldier who, before the bullet that had entered his leg was extracted in this hospital (the operation took place yesterday), had been sent first to Paris, the journey in the train taking eight days, then to the depot of his regiment at Orleans, where he learned that the d^pot had been removed to Montauban, and he must rejoin it there. At Montauban he was told IN FRANCE 215 that the radiographic apparatus had broken down, and that the deficient piece could not be replaced for another fortnight. As it would have to be fetched from Paris, the bright idea struck him to ask leave to return to Paris and get operated there, and the granting of this request saved his limb and perhaps his life. Another soldier first suffered amputation of a foot, and then of his leg, because there was no doctor to extract the bullet from the foot until twenty-three days after he had received the wound. He was a Senegalese, and during this interval he was tended and petted by amateur Red Cross women, who took a hysterical pleasure in manicuring his toe-nails, until they were a beautiful pink. It appears that to do this is quite a mania among some of the Red Cross nurses. The chief surgeon of the hospital, Dr. Beausenart, explained that the disorganisation of the medical department was largely owing to the abominable German prac- tice of systematically shelling the Red Cross when- ever it made its appearance on the field. As a consequence it was impossible to render first aid to the wounded in the firing-line. He suggested that the English Quakers should ask for a building to be allotted to them at a safe distance from shell-fire, that they should then furnish this as a hospital, and place it at the disposal of the French military doctors, with the addition perhaps of one English doctor. They should employ their stretcher-men and hospital orderlies in picking up the wounded in the firing-line, conveying them for first aid to a dressing station at a safe distance from the battle- field, and then despatch them to the hospital base to be dealt with by the French surgeons. He 216 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT thought that this proposition, if put to the authori- ties, would have a good chance of acceptance. Oct. 2gth. — The weather is clouding over and getting cold, which is (to me, at any rate) a sure sign that I am going away. My displacements are invariably accompanied by a change of weather. This, I have been told by an astrologer, is due to solar influences. Without knowing it, and without any previous calculation, I have, it seems, a tendency to follow the sun. To go to Bordeaux it is necessary to register your name a day in advance at the Quai d'Orsay station, but it is not necessary to have a permit. Ten minutes after I had bought my ticket it began to rain. I then went on to visit Madame D , who had called upon me with her daughter last night at the hotel. I was shocked to hear from the concierge that D was dead. The late Alphonse Bertillon and I were writing a book together in collaboration with D until Bertillon died, and now D has gone ! He had died, so his widow told me, from dysentery at Bordeaux, where dysentery, she says, is epidemic. The inhabitants call it "le mal du pays." She was very bitter against Bordeaux. All the vegetables and the fruit, especially the grapes, were "sulfates,'' in other words sprinkled with a sulphate solution to protect them against disease, and this made them poisonous to the consumer unless they were most carefully washed, a duty in which the cooks of Bordeaux systematically failed. We came away, she said, with a "pitre opinion de leur Bordeaux." By this she meant the city, not the wine. But the real Bordeaux, she maintained, was so astringent IN FRANCE 217 that only the natives could drink it without suffer- ing from serious gastric trouble, and what was sold as Bordeaux in Paris was not the pure article, but was doctored to make it innocuous and palatable. I reached Bordeaux in fairly good time, but in pouring rain, which stopped, however, as I alighted on the platform. My friend S , who had engaged a room for me, told me that it had been raining without intermission at Bordeaux for a month. I asked him how he was, and he replied that he was about as well as could be expected, considering that he had just got out of bed after five days of terrible dysentery, which had nearly done for him. He fully confirmed Madame D 's statement that dysentery is epidemic in Bordeaux. The doctor he sent for happened to be a personal friend, and so told the landlord that what he had was a very grave gastric trouble, otherwise, it seems, he would have been forced to leave the house, and go to a fever hospital, and his room would have had to be disinfected. It almost looks as if this "dysentery" were combined, as it often is, with cholera. The Government means to get out of Bordeaux as soon as possible, and, according to S , the epidemic is one of the chief motives of their impending departure. FOURTEENTH WEEK Bordeaux Oct. 31st. — It is difficult to imagine from its appearance that Bordeaux is now the capital of France. The Bordelais wear their usual lazy, narquois air. With the exception of an occasional familiar political face, which shows itself at a cafe, the sentry-boxes outside the houses where the Ministries are lodged, between which loll, in their shabby, brass-buttoned swallow-tail coats, the pointed-eared and wispy-haired Ministerial ushers, with flat backs to their heads (the type is invariable), a sprinkling of actors and actresses, the occasional passage along the Cours de l'lntendance of a British Embassy attache, with the long Etonian slouch, which arouses mixed feelings of admiration and bewilderment among the Gascon population, Bor- deaux is still the big provincial, commercial French town unchanged. Business goes on very much as usual, to judge from outsides. The cafes are crowded until ten at night, when they close. Gaiety and chatter everywhere. But on the whole an atmosphere of futility and emptiness. Change is as difficult to get as it was two months ago at Monte Carlo. Any quantity of copper, but no silver. The reason is, I am told, that the inhabitants of Bordeaux are hoarding up coin, and always 218 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT 219 paying, when possible, in paper money. To cope with the difficulty the Bordeaux Chamber of Com- merce issued paper notes worth one franc and fifty centimes, which are legal tender only in Bordeaux, but the exact opposite effect has resulted, for these notes were also persistently changed into cash, with the result that only copper coin is now plentiful. Even the little paper notes are becoming rare, having been saved up by collectors, and the one which I possess, bearing a face value of fifty centimes, is said to be now worth five francs to the amateur. Nov. ist. — The news reached here to-day that Churchill has succeeded in inducing Prince von Battenberg to resign his post as First Sea Lord of the Admiralty, which, in view of what was being said in Paris before I left, is not surprising. There it was believed that Prince von Battenberg was an obstacle to Churchill's doing always as he pleased, for Churchill was obliged to offer him a certain deference, owing to his relationship to the Royal Family, which will be unnecessary towards his successor, who is to be Lord Fisher. "Politics, politics, politics ! " is the comment generally made here, and the words are spoken in a tone in which regret mingles with contempt. France, who has had the bitter experience of Pelletan at the Ministry of Marine, knows all about such mountebank man- oeuvres, and of the ruin they entail. The Minister's letter accepting Battenberg's resignation is looked upon as insincere and long-winded, an attempt to veil in a cloud of words motives which are ashamed to show their faces. 220 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT The weather is showery, which is a clear hint to me that I shall not remain here long. To-day our hosts, who bear the same name as my English friend, himself of Gascon origin, and probably of the same family, prepared a wonderful lunch, the piece de resistance of which was a roast chicken a la Provencale with olives. My friend was the giver of the feast, to return a triumphal luncheon which the S s offered him last Sunday to cele- brate his convalescence, when a confit d'oie, or pickled goose, a famous Provencal dish, was served up. Our landlord, who is an old sailor, was him- self the cook, and he said, what is perfectly true, that only a real gourmand can ever be a good cook ; also that all real gourmands were cooks. He deprecated the eating of truffles on the ground that what truffles were meant for was to give a flavour to their surroundings, but they had no taste in themselves. This, he said, was the universal opinion among the Provencaux. I was not pre- pared to dispute it. It is true that the Provencaux are great authorities on mushrooms, and a discus- sion on the subject arose from the fact that the stewed veal which preceded the fowl was accom- plished by ceps, or tube-mushrooms, in German "stein-pilzen." Why the English should despise these delicious mushrooms, which they contemptu- ously and quite wrongly speak of as "toadstools," I never could understand. Only a few mushroom amateurs know of them and appreciate them in England. The favourite "toadstool" of both our host and his wife was the "goat's-beard," or hedgehog hydnum, which grows on oak-trees in Provence, IN FRANCE 221 but rarely in the north, and it is one of the few mushrooms that I have neither seen nor eaten. They did not know its brother, the hydnum repan- dum, which in the autumn covers the oak glades of the forests round Paris, millions of them gleam- ing out from under the russet leaves like freshly baked Reading biscuits. They had never heard of the "morel," which sells for such a high price in spring in the Paris market, nor of the "trumpet of the dead," the truffle of the poor, a black cornu- copia of delicate essences, sprinkled with gold, common under the beech-trees of Normandy, with which my American friend Barnard invented a cocktail long before the truffle cocktail had been evolved by the New York barmen. We discussed the "sanguin" (lactarius sanguifluiis), which is so plentiful on the Nice market, which I dislike myself owing to its cocoanut flavour, except when pickled, and the true "oronge," the favourite mushroom of Nero, which is rare in the Alpes Maritimes, though common across the Italian frontier, and enjoys, I think, an exaggerated reputation. And we touched upon some of the abstruse problems connected with the psychology of mushrooms, how they pro- pagate their species, of the human-like methods of the truffle in this particular respect, of their universal luminosity, and of the weird suggestions, sometimes mortal, which their almost supernatural powers of attraction enable them to create and spread over whole districts, affecting human beings and animals alike— things too deep and complex to be recapitulated here. Our host said that the official reason given to him by the tax-gatherer for the suppression of the 222 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT sale of absinthe was that the Government was anxious to limit as far as possible the consumption of alcohol, which largely enters into the composi- tion of modern gunpowder ! Nov. 2nd. — The weather has become gloriously fine. In the afternoon I wandered over the vast quays and docks. There were two big British ships coming in through the lock which separates the docks from the quays. Moored against the quay was the Manchester City, just about to start off on the home trip, next to La Gascogne, a French liner, which is now being used as a hospital, and is full of French wounded. The port of Bordeaux is crammed with British vessels bringing in cargoes of every description, and there is barely room for them. The absence of any German craft fills one with a deep sense of satisfaction. The streets of Bordeaux, but particularly the neighbourhood of the quays, are overrun with niggers, male and female, wearing the Senegalese native dress. The women carry their babies tied in a shawl behind their backs, which interests the Bordelais enormously. They beg of the passers-by. One Senegalese, with a huge grin, came up to me on the quay, and holding out his hand said, "Bon jour ! Comment 9a va? " with a tremendous emphasis on the "va." I an- swered politely, " Mais va-t-en ! "and walked on. Ten steps further back he had accosted somebody else. One boat moored against the quay is full of these Senegalese negroes and their children, picturesquely dressed, some of them with silver bangles on their ankles. It was variously stated that they are to be transported back to their native country, or were IN FRANCE 228 going to Lyons for exhibition purposes. The people who told you the latter story said that they had come from London, where they were to have been on show at the Olympia, but the war inter- vening, their engagements had been cancelled. According to the other tale the Senegalese always, as a rule, go to war accompanied by their wives, but on this occasion they have had to send them home. They certainly speak French fairly well. At the Cafe de Bordeaux an elderly and very fatherly Frenchman, having shown a most tender but quite gratuitous interest in the baby borne in a shawl upon the haunches of one of these Senega- lese women, was surprised to hear her ask for a sou in very fair French. "What! you speak French ? " he inquired, not giving her a sou. "Un peu ! " — this in an inimitable tone of disappointed impudence, as she waddled off. Nov. 3rd. — I find, after conversing with a number of persons who are in a position to be well-informed, that the facts as related in Paris, concerning the exodus of the Government to Bordeaux, the reasons and the manner of it, are in the main confirmed. There can be no doubt that the unexpectedly rapid march of the Germans on Paris, and the unequally unforeseen rapid reduction of the forts of Liege and Namur by the heavy Austrian artillery caused a real panic in Paris, extending itself, in no small measure, to the Government. It was at this moment that peace suggestions were, it is said, put forward, apparently from Germany, through the channel of the Spanish ambassador, according to which France was to pay five milliards of francs 224 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT war indemnity, and acquiesce in the annexation by Germany of Belgium, as well as surrender to Ger- many all her Algerian possessions. Germany, J" subject to these conditions, agreed not to enter ' Paris. It is possible and likely that these details are exaggerated, and that the French Government never entertained the offer, but nevertheless it was just at this date that the treaty between the Allies was signed on the initiative of England, by which they bound themselves not to make an independent peace. So no doubt there was some- thing of the kind in the air. From accounts which carry credit with them, there seems to have been two violent scenes at sittings of the Ministerial Council in Paris before the departure of the Government to Bordeaux. At the first of these General Joffre practically insisted on the departure of M. Messimy from the Ministry of War, on the basis of "you go, or I go." This ended satisfac- torily for General Joffre. General Gallieni now came on the scene as Military Governor of Paris, and it was decided to include in the new Ministry the leader of the Collectivist Socialists, M. Jules Guesde, in order to counterbalance the revolutionary movement which was beginning, it was feared, to start up in Paris. This movement was engineered by M. Caillaux, the Radical-Socialist leader, eager to revenge himself for the unequivocal manner in which his former Ministerial colleagues turned their backs on him, when his wife was tried for murdering M. Calmette. M. Jules Guesde's presence in the Cabinet as a Minister without port- folio was a guarantee that the working-classes of Paris would remain quiet. The second violent IN FRANCE 225 scene took place, with M. Guesde present as a some- what amused spectator, without taking any part in the debate, when the Government proposed to declare Paris an "open city," so as to save its price- less treasures from bombardment, and to leave it undefended, "to the protection of the Germans!" It was then that General Gallieni intervened with great energy, supported by General Joffre, with the result that the generalissimo received carte blanche on his own terms to continue the campaign accord- ing to his own lights without further Ministerial interference, and General Gallieni was allowed to undertake the defence of Paris. At the same time, and on the advice, and no doubt at the urgent request of General Joffre, the Government decided to leave Paris as promptly as possible for Bordeaux. In Paris, among the popular class, these incidents have been very damaging to the personal reputa- tions of the members of the Government, and of M. Poincare" in particular. It is, however, remem- bered in the President's favour that he promoted the re-establishment of the three years' military service, and so saved the country from a complete catastrophe. True to their traditions, the Parisians have invented sarcastic nicknames for the heroes of this exodus, who are called "tournedos a la bordelaise." In the culinary language the tournedos is a parti- cular kind of beefsteak, but by a play upon words which is more bitter than witty, it is applied to those who have turned their backs on danger. The expensive restaurant, where the fugitive politicians are accused of having "done them- selves" rather shamelessly well at Bordeaux, is the "Au Chapon Fin." The humorists have p 226 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT altered this to "Au Capon Fin," the "capon " being the legendary coward-bird. Of course, nothing of this has been published, and nothing will be done about it until the war is over. The critical period is passed, and all's well that ends well. But the political future of the parties that were governing France when the war broke out is certainly not a bright one. S explained the drastic action of the Government in practically laying its hands on all the deposits in the French banks as an effort to prevent a financial panic which the German Government had been trying to bring about some ten days before the outbreak of war. At one moment it had looked as if the Societe - Generate, at which the German financiers had made a deadset, might collapse. The danger was averted by the prompt action of the Banque de France, acting in concert with the French Government and a number of other important banking houses, including the Russian de Gunsbourgs. I am leaving Bordeaux this evening to return for a time to Nice, and on my way I shall stop for a few hours at Tarascon, which it has long been my ambition to see. From Champrosay to Tarascon, from Daudet's former home to this Mecca of the Midi, the home of the immortal Tartarin ! There is an artistic sequence in such a voyage. Moreover, has not Daudet in one of his most charming "Contes de Lundi " described Tarascon and the Ta- rasconnais in the last great war? It will be curious to see whether the Meridional spirit at its fountain- head will prove to be as undaunted as ever. The weather is magnificent. I learn that in finan- cial and diplomatic circles great optimism prevails. IN FRANCE 227 The British ambassador, Sir Francis Bertie, fre- quently visits H 's office, and to-day told him that Kitchener, who met Poincare" in France a few days ago, said to him textually : "We've got the Germans licked." This is confirmed by Joffre's latest statement. I only hope that it is true, though the news from the extreme left French wing where the Germans are trying to push through in order to get to Calais is not very encouraging to read. After saying good-bye to S I met H , the Paris, but now Bordeaux correspondent of the D S . He gave a strange description of the flight from Paris of the Government. It was a regular helter-skelter. Poincare* left at three in the morning, and one Minister is credited with having tele- graphed to Mademoiselle P , the actress, "Fous le camp au plus vite ! " The fact is that all the actors and actresses of the ComC"die Francaise and other semi-national theatres seem to have thought it essential to the well-being of France that they should seek safety in flight and accompany the Government to Bordeaux. This does not surprise me on the part of these "cabotins " or barnstormers. In Paris (though not to the same degree as in London), the actor has come to believe that the country cannot get on without him. Le Bargy has been seen going about the cours and avenues of Bordeaux with a worried look as if the destinies of empires were hanging upon his movements. Got in 1870 bolted with all the troupe of the Com^die Francaise to London and gave a show there. A banquet was organised in their honour, at which Gladstone made a speech, a fact which I should not have been aware of had not Got himself told me 228 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT years afterwards that my accent in speaking French was not that of the ordinary Englishman but "was exactly that of Mr. Gladstone," which flattered me beyond words. H left Paris because he has a wife and child, and it was announced that the Germans meant to shoot at sight all English news- paper correspondents as spies. He ascertained that the Germans had made out a list of hostages for use in the event of their taking Paris, and upon it figured the name of the British ambassador, also his own; it is quite possible. He had, he said, a terrible time getting away. The trains and boats were crammed (for he went first of all to London to deposit his wife and child there), and they were more than thirty hours without being able to get anything to eat or drink. He came back to Bor- deaux by boat from London. He said that all through the crisis the British Embassy here showed considerable pessimism. Perhaps this was on purpose, to react upon the French tendency to hope too high and then to despond too low. Tarascon Nov. 4th. — All during the night it rained in torrents, and according to a young Red Cross man who was in the train, it had been pouring without intermission throughout the whole of the Midi for more than a month, with disastrous conse- quences. One village had been swept away with a loss of over 150 inhabitants drowned in the flood. Nothing of this seems to have appeared in the newspapers, which are clearly too full of the war news in their now very limited space to refer to an incident of such purely local importance. Through IN FRANCE 229 the darkness of the night it was possible to see from the carriage window that the entire country we were passing through was more or less under water, which washed up almost to the carriage wheels. When daylight dawned miles upon miles of vine- yards were visible, all inundated. It stopped raining when I got out of Tarascon station, and I walked to the nearest hotel, the Ter- minus, which is recommended by the French Touring Club, and ought therefore to be clean. Its aspect was not very inviting, a long, low, two- storeyed house, with a vine-trellis and a general suggestion of the sear and yellow leaf. But my reception left no doubt in my mind that the Tara- sconnais temperament, as Daudet depicted it, still reigns supreme. When I asked for a room the waiter smiled knowingly at me, and said I probably knew more about rooms in that hotel than he did. "But I want to know the price that you charge for a room," I insisted. "Inside there," continued the waiter, pointing to the cafe within, and now hugely tickled, "you will find your friends. You are a little late, but better late than never. He ? And all alone! How's that? Where's Madame? He!" "You are evidently mistaking me for somebody else; I have never been here before." "Oh, the good joke ! You are Monsieur X of Mont- pellier, and your brother will soon be here to meet you. He!" "Nonsense, I know nothing about Montpellier, and my brother is at least a thousand miles away." "Then you are not M. So-and-so?" "Of course I'm not!" "And yet you wear a beard ! " A moment afterwards, as I was standing in the doorway waiting for the landlady, a middle- 280 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT aged man approached me, and holding out his hand, "Bon jour, cher ami!" he said cheerfully. The waiter rushed forward. "Monsieur, you are making a mistake. This gentleman is not your brother." "I beg your pardon," said the middle- aged man, "I took you for my brother. I was led astray by the fact that you wear a beard." " I too," said the waiter, "fell into the same error for the same reason." It is Tarascon of the best to assume that because a man wears a beard he is necessarily one's brother. In many ways, however, Tarascon was a dis- appointment and a disillusion. It is now an im- portant military centre, and has lost, if it ever possessed, much of the local and provincial charm and picturesqueness attributed to it by Alphonse Daudet, when he enframed within its time-worn stones and sunburnt pavements his portrait of Tar- tarin, architype of the exuberant Meridional or Frenchman of the south. Perhaps it is only a victim of the new conditions of locomotion which have arisen all the world over since Daudet wrote, and have destroyed the character of so many old- world and out-of-the-way corners of the earth, giving them movement but not life. Its ancient, indeed mediaeval, streets are silent, and wear so closed-up and secretive an air that one could almost think thev were deserted. Nowhere are there any signs of wealth, or indeed of ordinary well-to-do comfort. The war may perhaps be responsible in some measure for this appearance of neglect and somnolence, but it is clear that even at the best of times it justifies the description by a Nice friend of mine, himself a Meridional, "Mon Dieu, quel IN FRANCE 231 trou ! " How such an ebullient and eminently "live" creature as Tartarin could have supported such mortally dull surroundings is an enigma; un- less, perhaps, it was precisely his southern imagina- tion which enabled him to see palaces where we can only discern a tumble-down slum. An effort to be ultra-modern in the direction of free-thinking on the part of the municipality of Tarascon completes the impression of vulgarity and futility in which the town is steeped. There is a dear old church which has a Tartarinesque pretension to have once been a cathedral, and to contain in its crypt the tomb of Martha, the companion of Mary Magdalen. No doubt there are wise people prepared to throw doubt on the authenticity of this tomb, as if that mattered. And to show their contempt for super- stition and their admiration of the late M. Renan's agnostic genius, the municipal council of Tarascon have named, with a bad taste they would have been more sensible not to flaunt quite so publicly, the square, the silent little cobble-stoned square with its blind, creeper-trailing houses, which surrounds the church, Place Renan ! What these humorists have failed to notice, however, for this sort of humour is never very profound, is that to reach the Place Renan you pass up the Rue des Juifs. There is a good deal of the personal history of Renan, and of recent French history underlying that simple coincidence of facts. But though the flamboyant personality of Tartarin was in the main missing from the atmosphere of the sleepy little place, there was no lack of signs that the Tarasconnais is affected by the war much as he was when Daudet described the exploits of the gallant 232 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT Captain Bravida, the farewell dinner to the volun- teers who never went of! to the war and never meant to, and the elaborate precautions taken to prevent a surprise by the enemy. The Cafe de la Comedie is still in the middle of the town, and still "impreg- nable." It is easy to believe that the Tarasconnais again sleeps with one eye open in anticipation that "ils" may arrive at any moment. The Rhone has overflowed its banks and half Beaucaire, the town on the opposite side of the river, is under water. If "ils" were to come, they would find the same natural obstacle isolating Tarascon as that which bars the way to Dunkerque and Calais. The esplanade is again "torpedoed" by the floods. A crowd of Taraconnais were spending the afternoon watching the water-gauge at the head of the bridge marking the slow rise of the river. There could be no doubt about it, their faces expressed satisfac- tion. With every additional centimetre the natural defences of Tarascon were being strengthened. The sufferings of the flooded-out inhabitants of Beau- caire mattered not at all beside the saving-grace of this achievement. There is a house pointed out at Tarascon as having been that of the immortal Tartarin, but it is probably even less authentic than the tomb of Martha. The waiter at the cafe adjoining the hotel, who might have been any age between eigh- teen and forty to judge from his appearance and his talk, pooh-poohed the idea that Tartarin had ever lived at Tarascon. "He is more likely," he said, "to have been an inhabitant of Montpellier, where I too was born, although I am of the pure Tarasconnais blood. You are an Englishman, IN FRANCE 233 monsieur ? Then I am surprised to see you in Tarascon, for hitherto all Englishmen arriving at Tarascon have been immediately arrested at the station and taken to prison as spies." "But why should you imprison inoffensive Englishmen ? " "For fear they might be Germans ! " "You surprise me. How can an Englishman be a German ? " "Ah, monsieur, that is a question for the military authorities. I am only a ' garcon de cafeV " "Fetch me a ' picon grenadine.' I don't believe a word you say." " He is very ' bavard ' [talkative], that young- man," said a soldier sitting at the next table, "but you must forgive him. He is only thirteen!" The young soldier, who himself came from Car- cassonne, turned out to be nearly as talkative as the thirteen-year-old waiter. He had been invalided from the front with a bad attack of pneumonia, and was going home to recruit his strength. He talked English, learned fairly well in a succession of London boarding-houses, and spoke cheerfully of the chances of the war. "Much will depend on Italy," he thought. "Italy would like to make war, but she has no money. To induce her to go to war, one of the powers must lend her money." He did not think that the war would last long. The Germans were at the end of their resources in men, while the French still had vast reserves. "But you admit that the German is a good fighter ? " "H'm! A good fighter if you like; the differ- ence, however, between the French and the German 234 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT fighter is that the German, to fight well, has to be supported by the ' grade" ' [non-commissioned officer], while the Frenchman can fight alone, with-* out any ' grade" ' to urge him on." He thought little of the fighting value of the Arabs, who threw away their gunfire and made mad unrestrained rushes which were "superb but not war." "You must excuse me," said the thirteen-year- old waiter, coming back and placing the "amer picon " on the table, "if I am now called away. But that child sitting over there wants to play a game of manille with me." He pointed to a fantastically turbulent and red-cheeked infant seated at a further table wearing a troubadour hat, and waving with frenzy a packet of cards. The game, as they played it, was fast and furious. The child, holding his cards high in the air in true Meridional fashion or banging them noisily on to the table, shouted, "Et voila le neuf, et voila le cinq, et voila le dix; je gaggne ! " "Mais nong, ti ne gaggne pas. Voila l'as; et voila le roi, et voila la reine. C'est moi qui gaggne," said the waiter. But the child had already caught up the cards : "Je te dis que c'est moi." "And who won?" I asked. "HeM Mais c'est moi qui a gaggne\ Que voulez vous ? II ne joue pas bieng. II n'a pas encore assez d'experiengce. II a beaucoup d'aptitude, mais ! C'est un enfanf. II n'a que quatre angs!" Nov. $th. — The next morning, as I was preparing to leave Tarascon, the child-waiter, with a profes- sional limp, and a very all-night-up look in his face, but still full of affability and information, made an urgent appeal to me not to leave Tarascon IN FRANCE 235 without purchasing a kind of bonbons, which were the speciality of the place. They were called "Tar- tarinades de Tarascon." "You have no idea," he said, "how good they are. Immense balls of chocolates filled with another kind of sweetmeat flavoured with liqueur. The smallest box is only one franc fifty. And such big balls ! They make an excellent present for a lady. I will jump on to my bicycle and fetch you a box in no time. Believe me, you will not regret your purchase." And after a demur, I remembered the Countess' two children and told him he might go. And he came back with a beam of success and of southern sunlight on his face, and his thirteen-year-old enter- prise was rewarded with the fivepence change out of the two-franc piece. That young man will go far — probably North. On the station platform an elderly captain of cavalry in uniform came up to me rather stiffly and inquired whether I had any military papers. The sight of my passport, which he at first thought erroneously had not been visaed in France, satisfied him, and he apologised for his suspicions, to which I replied that he was perfectly correct and could not be too strict in such matters. He saluted and said, " Au revoir ! " I do not like to be uncharitable, but I could see that he was still unconvinced that I was not a German spy, and I more than half suspect that it was the thirteen-year-old waiter who had put him on the track. They were much of the same size and appearance, and as neither of them wore beards, perhaps they were brothers. The captain looked a hundred, but in Tarascon there is clearly no accounting for age. 236 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT German Psychology Or another reason for his suspicions may have been that I held in my hand a French translation of a novel by H. Sudermann, entitled, Le Chemin des Chats, or The Cats' Path; I do not know what the German title may be. I had bought it at the railway bookstall, thinking that it might throw a light upon the average German psychology, which would have special interest just now. My antici- pations were more than fulfilled. The Cats' Path is the most amazing analysis imaginable of the fundamental vileness and meanness of the average German character, and proportionately valuable from the psychological point of view because written by a German. None but a German could, or would have written it. It should be sub- titled The Romance of German Hatred, and people who fail to understand the diabolic savageness of the hatred which animates all classes in Germany against England, or to estimate it at its true moral value should read The Cats' Path, and they will be enlightened as well as immeasurably disgusted. I repeat that but for the fact that this description is supplied by a German of a low order of talent, it is true, but with a power of exact observation which is, not so much conscientious as "inconsciente," few people would believe it. The story of The Cats' Path centres round the theme that a certain German baron, who lived on the Eastern Prussian frontier at the beginning of the last century, and was of partial Polish extraction, was inspired by his anti-Prussian sympathies to guide a detachment of French troops through a path IN FRANCE 237 in his grounds, known as "The Cats' Path," thereby enabling them to surprise and slaughter a number of Prussian soldiers. Adopting as a leit- motif the pretence of avenging this act of treason, the baron's serfs indulge in every species of villainy. There is no act of cowardice and barbarism and scoundrelism which they do not with this excuse commit, doing, in fact, what the Germans are doing to-day behind the hypocritical mask of a lofty in- spiration, of which they are utterly incapable, giv- ing free play to instincts of blood-thirsty cruelty, which would be beneath the dignity of a tiger, and of an indecent poltroonery and greedy thievishness of which any ordinary domestic animal, a self- respecting dog or cat, to say nothing of that intelli- gent animal, the pig, would be ashamed. They burn down the baron's castle, try to boycott him into starvation, anger him into a fatal attack of apoplexy, refuse to allow his body to be buried, bully, beat, and finally murder an unfortunate servant-girl from the village, whom he had forced to aid him in his work of treason, and after his death propose to deal with his son and heir in the same way. This innocent youth is made responsible for what his father did, the villagers, headed by a drunken bully, who is an officer in the Landwehr with the Iron Cross, and was formerly the young- baron's school chum, pretending that their sense of the father's moral obliquity is so acute that it is impossible for such high-minded and irreproach- able patriots not to include in their immeasurable indignation his descendants, and all who have approached him. The whole village lives upon this crazy and blasphemous lie. Among the most 288 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT active of these champions of righteousness and honour is the servant-girl's father, the carpenter Hackelberg, who is also a blackmailer, an alcoholic and homicidal lunatic, and has in a lucid moment robbed his daughter of the price of her dishonour, and spent it in drink. They are aided and abetted and publicly approved of by the president of the district, a nobleman, who had a family feud with the late baron which he is meanly seeking to revenge, by the mayor, and by the pastor. It was the pastor who refused Christian burial to the dead baron, and in order to do this with impunity, he made a criminally false entry into the parish register declaring that the death and burial had taken place several years previously, in fact on the night of the betrayal— "a moral death! " says the hypocritical old forger. This Prussian Protestant clergyman admits to the young baron, whom he has saved from lynching by the villagers because he hopes to marry him to his daughter, that, "though placed by God upon earth to preach peace and con- cord, I am now preaching hatred and vengeance," and he has become "also a wild beast," but that is the fault of the late baron. "Behold," he says to the young baron, "what thy father has made of us. The poison ferments in our souls, and will descend from father to son until the Lord has made to dis- appear from the world the traces of this hideous crime, Amen " (he is not referring, of course, to his own crime) ! Incidentally, this is not dissimilar from the present attitude of the Germans towards England. " Look at what you have done," they are in reality saying. "By refusing to join us in dishonouring IN FRANCE 289 our signature you have deprived us of our good name, you have robbed us of the world's respect, you have increased your own reputation for honesty, by contrast with ours in the most unjustifi- able way, for which wrong we must exact venge- ance; you have driven us to commit murder and theft and every kind of cowardly crime against the Belgians, who were our peaceful friends, thereby embarrassing ' the good old German god,' who was our Kaiser's personal acquaintance, and up till then had always followed his lead, but now hardly knows which way to turn in order to save his own throne. Behold what England has made of us — wild beasts ! The poison ferments in our souls. Vengeance, until the Lord has made to disappear from the world the traces of this hideous crime, which is yours, for you made it a crime by refusing to be an accomplice in it. Amen ! " Through three hundred pages, H. Sudermann, with the serenity and the inartistic realism of a cinematograph machine, projects upon the canvas of his story this monotonous and monstrous suc- cession of vile deeds, typical of German national instincts, and reeking with every species of moral filth. No population has ever been described as having reached so low a level in any other literature in the world. The characters in Zola's La Terre are decent people as compared with Sudermann's East Prussians. Gorki's Russian peasants are nothing to them. In the end the young baron's military record procures him the Iron Cross and protection from the Prussian king, a fact which provokes the cock of the village, his chief enemy, the patriotic 240 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT Landwehr lieutenant, to insult the king by tearing off his own Iron Cross, to strike his superior officer, and to mutiny, although on active service. The- drunken carpenter shoots his own daughter in mistake for the young baron, the pastor's daughter misconducts herself with the Landwehr lieutenant (she had been the baron's sweetheart), and the story ends "en queue de poisson " with a general depar- ture for the wars, where the baron, and it is to be hoped everybody, gets killed. It is not because the scene of the tale is laid at the beginning of the last century that Sudermann's descriptions and analyses of character are any less applicable now. It takes more than three genera- tions to radically change a nation's psychology, and there is no reason to suppose that if no such change has happened in France or England it should have happened in Prussia. Moreover, at whatever period a novelist may date his story's setting, he is obliged, in order to make it human and comprehensible, to adapt modern mentalities to it. Sudermann's Ger- mans of the year 1813 talk and act just as the Germans are acting and talking to-day, and as I have always known them to talk and act. There are superficial differences in dress, and that is about all. If anything, the Germany of Goethe and Beethoven was more civilised than the Germany we have had to live w r ith. Dishonour had not then been proclaimed a National Ideal with the approba- tion of the German monarchy and of the German "intellectuals." What Sudermann proves, and what Germany is now making evident, even to the blindest and the most prejudiced of the Germanophiles, is that what IN FRANCE 241 Germany always has been, and still is, chiefly lacking in is an elementary, ethical education. She has no consciousness of the degree of heathen barbarism in which she is steeped. Her thinkers and writers and professors of German "kultur " are, in spite of their admitted aptitude for dull, laborious research, too ill-educated to be able to tell her of it. They are uncivilised; they share to the full her mental and moral backwardness. They wallow in the same pigsty of ethical stupidity. A civilised man must have not only social manners, but moral manners ; the Germans are equally lacking in both. When the time comes for reckoning with this intel- lectually and ethically barbarous nation, one of the essential measures to be taken as much for civilisa- tion's sake as for Germany's own will be to re- organise her national system of education. It is to be hoped that the amiable dolts who have for so long been dinning into our ears that German educa- tion is the best in the world and that Germany's greatness is due to her schoolmasters will by that time have recognised their mistake. This has always been untrue, even from the point of view of mere material results, such as the acquisition of languages, or the practice of any of the fine arts, without reference to the ethical side of the question. But in future the civilising of Germany must be taken practically and intelligently in hand. I do not go so far as my friend Th , the vice-president of the Nice anti-German League, who thinks that the Germans ought to be forced to learn and speak Belgian, and to abandon their own barbarous tongue altogether. Their own attempts to suppress the Polish language supply a precedent. But the Q 242 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT German schoolmaster should in future be trained in humane and civilised methods, preferably French ; and the nation as a whole should be taught that for the present it is, and has amply proved itself to be in a state of intellectual and, above all, ethical infancy, that its conduct is under the surveil- lance of its elders and betters, that it must obey the laws of civilisation and humanity, and that if it does not it will be treated like a dirty-minded, vicious child, and whipped into obedience. Marseilles I had told the proprietor of the cafe at Tarascon that the weather was going to be fine for a reason which he little suspected, but he demurred to this, and maintained that until the north wind came the rain would continue over the whole of the Midi, but he proved to be wrong, and it was in lovely sunshine that I reached Marseilles. Here were a few Indian officers and British naval officers moving about, signs of the arrival of our Far Eastern con- tingents, which is still proceeding at a brisk rate. The train arrived two hours late at Nice, at seven instead of five in the evening. The Turkish ambas- sador was on board with a wife and a very ugly, bullet-headed child. A Frenchman in the carriage with me fell asleep, and I noticed an insect, a kind of black-beetle, running along the padded cushion at his back in the direction of his head, the glistening baldness of which, no doubt, attracted it as a flame does a moth. I roused him in order to warn him of this offensive attack in his direction on the part of "une petite bete," and in his bewilder- IN FRANCE 243 ment he thought that I had waked him to tell him that he was "une bete." I tried "cafard," which is French for black-beetle; he took this for another insult : it being the rude word for hypocrite. A satisfactory explanation was possible, however, in time, and he then made a complicated and quite futile effort to catch and smash the black-beetle with a newspaper. It finally escaped through a crack in the floor. But while the hunt lasted it reminded me of one of the comic scenes — always alike — which alternate with the blood-and-murder films at a moving-picture show. P , Camille Blanc's secretary, who was also in the train, afterwards told me that the man was a Paris detective, who was watching over the safety of the Turkish ambassador. It is a serious offence to call a French policeman either "une bete," or "un cafard," hence his astonishment. On arriving at Nice I took the Countess to dinner at Rich's Restaurant. She told me that on Tuesday last there had been a slight earthquake at Nice. No report of this has appeared in any of the papers, for fear, no doubt, of scaring away potential visitors to the Riviera, and spoiling a season, upon which the Nicois still count to some extent, though, of course, it can only be a very lame one. No news has been heard from young Rousset, who, as it turns out, left for the front on the first day of mobilisation, so that his death must now be presumed. Should this turn out to be so, the pre- diction of his clairvoyante aunt at the time of his birth, that he would die of a gunshot wound at the age of twenty, will have been fulfilled. FIFTEENTH WEEK Nice Nov. 6th to Nov. nth. — The weather has been gloriously fine, and the air as warm and soft as in spring. The Countess told me on my arrival that for a month the weather had been awful, cold and wet, and practically sunless. The days have been so much like one another that there is no need to make a record of each one of them. Every morning I have been to the "Grande Bleue " to bathe in the sea, which has been calm as a lake. The water was just right, neither warm nor too cold. When I left Nice in the beginning of Sep- tember it was tepid and disagreeable for bathing in. Nice still wears a very summery aspect. The leaves on the plane-trees in the avenues are only beginning to turn partially russet. The streets are as crowded as in the height of the season, but not with so well-dressed a crowd, for there are many refugees here from Belgium, and they have been billeted on some of the best hotels. Their appear- ance is in general dilapidated, they belong mostly to the working-class, so that what was once a smart quarter has now, in many cases, taken on the air of a slum, which is accentuated by the habit of these poor folk of hanging their washing and bedding out of the windows. The Terminus Hotel opposite the 244 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT 245 station was, at the beginning of the war, marked down by popular opinion as a centre of German espionage, and it was reported quite untruthfully that the proprietor, a German named Morlock, who posed as an Englishman, had been arrested and shot. A few days ago (and this, by the way, is another fact which has not found its way into the Paris or English newspapers) a Swiss waiter at this hotel said, or was thought to have said as a convoy of wounded passed by on their way from the station, that there were not yet French wounded enough. An infuriated crowd gathered with light- ning rapidity, chased the waiter over the hotel, and would have killed him if he had not succeeded in hiding in a wardrobe, and then proceeded to sack the premises. They had reached the point of hurl- ing the "armoires a glaces " out of the top windows into the street below, and were about to set the place on fire, when a detachment of troops succeeded in driving them out. Since then the local authori- ties have put a seizure on the hotel as being the property of an enemy, and it is now occupied by refugees. Mr. Morlock has been sent off to a concentration camp. T found Th , who plays an active role in the public life of Nice wildly enthusiastic over the per- formances of the British Army. He insists that, without any doubt, they saved the situation for the French. "You see," he said, "we Frenchmen are good fighters, but we are easily discouraged. We cannot stand temporary defeat. It was just this stiffening which we need in a dismal operation like a retreat, that the cool, imperturbable English supplied us with. The English get it from their 246 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT love of sport, and particularly football. I was much struck, and greatly pleased, with the answer given a few days ago by a sergeant to his General who was complimenting him on the splendid dash and per- tinacity with which he had rallied and led his men in a successful charge against the Germans after all the officers in his company had been killed off. This feat had won for him the ' Military Medal.' 1 Where did you learn the art of keeping your men together? ' asked the General. ' From the practice of football,' replied the sergeant ! There you have it. And, believe me, that football spirit that the British soldiers put into their work was not only a splendid example and encouragement to our men, but it saved a retreat from becoming a rout." I noticed on my return that great changes had taken place in our house. Four out of ten flats were empty, and apparently only one occupant had paid any rent. After three months of the war the im- pression it conveyed was similar to that of the youthful culprit in the Rev. Mr. Horsley's Auto- biography of a Thief, which prefaces M. Albert Barrere's Dictionary of French and English Argot and Slang: "When I got home I found a great change in my father, who had taken to drink, and he did not take so much notice of what I done as he used." (Incidentally one of the most pathetic sentences of narrative English prose ever written, and one which would have roused the enthusiasm of George Borrow.) The house, on a broad boule- vard lined with plane-trees, is characteristic of Southern France, and of a big cosmopolitan town like Nice, clean, almost handsome, furnished with marble staircases, and all the modern conveniences, IN FRANCE 247 and with a glorious view over sea and mountains. It cannot be said to have taken to drink, but it is drowned in sorrow, and doesn't seem to take so much notice of what we do as it used. In the flat opposite and on the same floor, there was, when I hired my pied-a-terre, an ex-officer of the Italian navy with his family. He had been ruined by gambling — the curse of all this part of the world — and was dying of consumption, the result of over- work in a vain but honourable effort to make up his losses, and assure his wife's future. He had left just after the outbreak of the war, owing the proprietor of the house several quarters' rent. Then there is the Countess, a charming little lady and my own landlady, who is by nature and for profit an artist in fashions. Her title of Countess (this for the information of the curious) is quite authentic, and her possession of it an indisputable right, for if not actually and in its origin her very, very own, she has it on a limitless loan from a friend who has inherited an ancient title of Count which he does not use, and so lends about like a spare umbrella. The war has deprived her of all her customers, who were "season-visitors," and, of course, Nice, though full of refugees and wounded, with a sprinkling of Parisians, has no season, properly speaking, this year. The Countess owes the "propri^taire " several quarters' rent, but thanks to the moratorium, and the fact that as her only son is at the front, she is in receipt of £2 10s. per month from the Government with which to support herself and two little girls, she cannot be forced to leave her flat or pay any rent until the moratorium is abolished. In the flat below is the 248 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT former director of a well-known news agency, with one young unmarried daughter and two grandsons. Once a brilliant, successful man of business, he is now in straitened circumstances in consequence of having developed a pronounced but harmless form of religious mania. With them is a boarder — before the war he might have been described as a "paying guest" — an ex-deputy, whose election to the Chamber some years ago was fraudulently, he maintains, annulled. He belongs to that class of Frenchmen, numerous in the south, who always put public before household affairs. In other words they are more concerned with the common weal than with the necessity of earning a living. Had he not been the most transparently honest man in the world, this instinct might have borne him to the highest honours. As it is he is president of half-a-dozen committees and charitable organisa- tions, but earns nothing. The two lads who make up, with their youthful but unmarried aunt, the rest of the family, are both hopelessly out of work, for as they may be mobilised at any moment, no one will employ them ; but they are otherwise willing and industrious, though hating the mere notion of going to the front, with that uncompromising ma- terialism which is often to be found in the MidL Their aunt displays amazing ingenuity and tireless energy in making both ends meet. In spite of their difficulties the inhabitants of the house are not backward in contributing, by personal efforts and otherwise, to the national needs. The ex-deputy, being, among other public functions, honorary secretary general of a benevolent association con- nected with an auxiliary hospital, spends most of IN FRANCE 249 his time at the hospital chatting with an American princess who is a most uncompromising nurse, and in love with his Southern eyes and black beard ; and when he gets home he protects his head from draughts, of which all Southerners are mor- tally afraid, with a blue military forage cap, on which is a red cross. He has no right, however, to wear this headgear in the street. The old agency man, when he is not praying in a church, goes about in pursuance of a really beautiful idea of his own, to seek out poor people (of whom none surely is poorer than he is), who are too timid or too shamefaced to personally apply for aid, and to give them the bread and soup tickets which can be had for the asking at the offices of various charity organisations. One of the grandsons was earning a little money by placing subscriptions to a daily sheet founded by the ex-deputy, called The Re- awakening of Nice, the contents of which were, it must be confessed, wholly filched from the news placarded from hour to hour at the offices of the two principal Nice dailies ; but this source of income has ceased, for certain shameless political influences set in motion by the rival papers (so the ex-deputy says) have caused an old law to be enforced which forbids newspapers to be sold in the streets except by duly certificated hawkers, and of these there are none left in Nice. Thus did the Reawakening of Nice cease to reawaken. One other flat is inter- mittently occupied by a family with a big dog, who are typically "people of Marseilles." Their motto, I am told, is that "dans notre famille tout le monde se debrouille " ("all the members of our family must look out for themselves"); and so, as the parents 250 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT have been nearly ruined by the war, the youngest daughter, a brilliant Southern beauty, after a brief honeymoon with an Italian baker-boy who makes bread in one of the underground cellars, has moved her sole permanent address to the Promenade des Anglais. The youngest boy, aged thirteen, with the idea of getting to Paris, where he thought fortune awaited him, walked to Marseilles, living on food given him by the soldiers whom he found bivouacking on the road. From Marseilles he went by rail to Lyons, where he was arrested for travel- ling without a ticket, and after a fortnight on remand was sent home at the expense of his parents, who, true to the grim family motto, gave him nothing but a bath, of which he was certainly much in need, and next morning turned him out of doors. Of the remaining flats in the house that are empty, the former occupants have been mobilised, and of these one, an architect, has already been killed. On the 6th in the afternoon I met de B , who is now as optimistic as he was pessimistic at the time of my leaving Nice. He is rejoiced at the general effort which is being made under govern- ment control to supply the French troops with warm garments for the winter, and remarked in the course of a dissertation upon this subject, "You may remember that I called your attention at the begin- ning of the war to the French soldier's boots." Well, it appears that the admirable principle then adopted of allowing the French soldier to purchase his own boots so as to insure their being a good fit has now been extended to underlinen, com- forters, gloves, mittens, etc., to the infinite credit of the French military authorities and the great IN FRANCE 251 advantage of the troops. On the morning of the 7th G turned up with the old story, derived in this case from his wife and authenticated apparently by the fact that in England his wife's parents' country-house is next door to that of Lord Roberts, that General Percin, in command at Lille, was shot for having failed to support French, and this because Kitchener personally went over to insist upon it. Percin 's wife was a German, and Percin was a traitor in German pay. I told G that this story is positively denied by people in Paris, who ought to know, and according to them Percin was relieved of his command because "il avait peur au feu " (he was gun-shy). On the 10th I lunched with the N s at the Hotel d' , where there are now only three wounded sufficiently ill to remain in bed. The "soupe populaire " is also practically non-existent, for as N now says (what had already seemed evident to me), "there are no ' misereux ' in Nice." Rene N has become a corporal. Madame N 's son Jacques was first taken prisoner, then recaptured and released, and is now attached to an English regiment, his own having been practically wiped out. He is enthusiastic about his English comrades. In the evening I met J H , who already thinks of starting a company for rebuilding the French and Belgium villages which have been devastated, but at the expense of the Germans, and on a scale of magnificence unheard-of before in the French rural districts. He thinks the English garden cities should be taken as a model. This idea was suggested by my remark, that however much one must deplore the loss to the villagers of their 252 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT homes, the destruction of the French country cot- tage on a large scale was a by no means unmitigated misfortune, for as a general rule anything more- ugly, dilapidated and insanitary could hardly be imagined. With this he fully agreed. On the nth, after a dip in the sea, I met G , who described the unreasonable red-tape obstacles which have been set up to prevent any one, foreigner or Frenchman, from driving in a motor- car outside of Nice. An application in writing has to be made, after which a police inquiry is set on foot, and then more written applications are de- manded, with the warning that in all probability they will be refused. I recommended G to reveal the whole state of affairs in the Anglo- American Press of Paris, unless a little more rational consideration were shown. This might have the desired effect, as it would emphasise the mistake of keeping English and Americans with cars from visiting Nice this season, supposing they meant to. The only way to disentangle oneself from local red- tape is to threaten the local pocket. The news that Dixmude has been taken has caused some depres- sion here. Maitre R , whom I met in the tram, thinks that Germany will now fling the whole of her army, including that portion of it which is fighting against the Russians, on to the French left, in a final and overwhelming effort to get to Calais. This is a specimen of the "chamber strategy " which one is expected to listen to in Nice. The market is still a very brilliant display of colour, though not so fresh and variegated as in September. Prices have not gone up, and in many important ways have gone down. For instance, IX FRANCE 253 the price of a Bresse fowl is now three francs a kilo, as compared with six francs this time last year ! Nov. 12th. — I dined with the Countess at Ghis' restaurant and met G. N there. The war has struck him hard. He looks pale and tired, and is now a vegetarian, except for his midday meal, but this is as much a measure of economy as of hygiene. Nov. 13//1. — After my sea-bath I met G , who drove me in his car to the little garden hotel at La Californie, which is called "Au Grand Balcon," there to take our aperitifs and renew acquaintance with Therese and her quaint old Xicois husband. It was horrible to learn that the old fellow received news this morning of the death of his only son, and also of his nephew, both killed at the front. He had gone off "comme un fou " to Nice to learn further particulars, if possible. We were shown the photographs of the two lads, both nice-looking fellows. At the Cafe des Bains opposite they have had news of the proprietor, who, being now at some distance from the fighting line, is comparatively safe. M came to lunch. He is stopping at Monte Carlo, where the Casino is still closed, though the Sporting Club has been authorised to start a roulette table ! The papers both here and in England are dis- cussing the question of the special hatred felt by the Germans against England, and trying to explain it. That it should be so little understood is another proof of the hopeless ignorance of the German mentality prevalent both here and in England. This ignorance has been on every possible occasion 254 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT encouraged and added to by the official speeches and public declarations of certain statesmen, ; who profess, and are supposed, to know Germany • through and through. It is but charitable to sup- pose that it is their wits that have been at fault, and that they have not been deliberately betraying the public cause for a consideration. But as matters stand it is a choice between the two deductions. They have been as blind men leading the blind into a ditch, or they have "been got at." In any case the salaries and the pensions they are drawing from the public purse are wholly unearned, and it is a scandal that they should continue to be paid. The reason why Germany is so intensely bitter against England is that England has smothered the German good name for all time in a mire of dis- honour. The Germans profess to be particularly punctilious in matters of honour, especially as to the pledged word. In a general way if a German in any kind of recognised position gives you his word of honour, he may be relied upon not to break it. The reason is, not that the individual German has a very acute sense of honesty — on the contrary, the reverse is the case, as a rule — but a distinct social disability attaches itself in Germany to a proved or flagrant case of breach of the word of honour. This fact is taken advantage of by money- lenders in Germany, who when the officer, or noble- man, to whom they have lent money, has no tangible security to give for a further loan, demand his written word of honour that he will pay back what he owes on a given date. They know that he will leave no stone unturned to keep such an engagement, for should he fail, he would, as an IN FRANCE 255 officer, be cashiered from the Army, and if he were a nobleman he would be degraded to the rank of a commoner. Germany has always been pleased to consider that England is much more lax in these matters of honour than herself. It is a fact that the expres- sion, "I give you my word," is more loosely used by us than by the Germans. What enrages them, therefore, beyond expression, is that England should have gone to war, should, on her own initiative, have declared war, in the name of "honour," to honour her own signature to an inter- national treaty, signed also by Germany. Ger- many thus becomes the felon, the dishonoured, power of Europe, and she knows it; and most galling of all it is the English, the "nation of shopkeepers," as she is so fond of calling us, repeat- ing, with the dull persistence of an incorrigible bore, a misunderstood reproach of Napoleon's, who has made this fact blazingly evident by contrast, who has rubbed her nose violently in her own filth. The unexpectedness of the blow only made it the more hard to bear. France, it is an understood thing, is defending her hearth and home. Belgium is doing likewise. Russia is fighting the battle of Panslavism against that of Pangermanism. You can profess to treat these enemies with the con- sideration due to a valiant if doomed foe (even if in reality your conduct is vile and cowardly beyond description) ; but what sort of mercy can you have for a nation, whose honour you have estimated so low, but who, when all is said and done, is fighting precisely to uphold that very honour in which you have so lamentably failed ? Such people are 256 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT to be suppressed and exterminated at all cost, for they are the living witnesses of your national shame, and by refusing to be your accomplices have pro-" claimed it. By every trick of calumny and false- hood you must endeavour to shift the burden of dishonour from your shoulders and fix it on to theirs. Otherwise the German nation stands con- victed not only in the eyes of the world, but in its own eyes, of having failed in honour, and when that conviction is made doubly evident by comparison, Germany has, from the point of view of her own moral code, nothing left to do but to break her sword, and renounce all claim to nobility and the respect of honourable men. In similar circum- stances many a German officer would, in private life, commit suicide. Are the Kaiser and the whole German nation with him to be degraded at a sign from England like the caitiff knight of old? Alas, you cannot wield the sword of mediaeval chivalry and masquerade as a champion of Christendom without accepting the contingent responsibilities. You can play Lohengrin, and behind the scenes be a com- mon forger — but only on the stage. The double part is impossible in real life. This is the dilemma in which the Emperor and his people find them- selves, and it is the English who have placed them in it. And the fact of having done so is in German eyes as unpardonable as the situation is inextric- able. This despised nation of shopkeepers has proved that there is not one shopkeeper amongst them who is not a better gentleman than the whole of the German aristocracy put together. What quarter can we English people expect after that? IN FRANCE 257 I note one thing, that while the ancient "wheeze" of the English being a nation of shopkeepers is in higher favour than ever with the German journalist, his stock-in-trade has been most calamitously reduced by the inevitable disappearance of two famous "cliches " ; these are : "Fear God and keep your powder dry," and "The Germans fear God, and nothing else in the world," the latter a quota- tion from Bismarck, while the first is attributed on the authority of Carlyle to Oliver Cromwell. The German powder has got an irremediable wet- ting in Flanders, and the Allies have put all the fear of God into the Germans that they are likely to need for the time being. What on earth the wretched German journalists and Herr Professors will do without these two phrases, now void of all application and meaning, on which their livelihood has depended for so long, Heaven only knows. Without them no article in any German paper has been complete for the last thirty years. SIXTEENTH WEEK Nov. 14th. — J H gave me a curious account this morning of the intrigues which have been going on in Nice since the beginning of the war. His story was suggested by my remarking to him on the curious hesitation now shown by the Government as to whether or not they should return from Bordeaux to Paris. Yesterday the Petit Mar- seillais, which is a Government organ, said that they had abandoned this idea for the time being and would wait until the German armies had definitely been driven from French territory. This morning, on the contrary, the Eclaireur maintains that it is still their intention to return after the 15th. According to J H , the party in France which is plotting to overthrow the Republican regime, wants to have the Government in Paris, where it can be most easily got at in the event of an emeute. With the Government in Bordeaux a revolution in Paris would be much more difficult to carry out. The Eclaireur, he says, reflects the ideas of the Echo de Paris, the organ of the clerico- militarists, whose other organ is the Action Fran- caise. If the Echo de Paris says that the Govern- ment is certainly on the point of returning to Paris, it is a case of the wish being father to the thought. It is also a sign that the Action Francaise faction 258 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT 259 are plotting something in the nature of a definite move at no distant date. They will probably try to set up a military dictatorship, but to do this they would have to secure the co-operation of both General Joffre and General Gallieni. The chances, however, are that these two generals would decline to co-operate with one another in such an adventure. It was on account of the imminent danger of a revolution that the Civic Guard was suppressed in Paris, and subsequently all over France, including Nice. In Nice the Civic Guard was being openly used for agitating against the Prefect, who has roused against himself the hatred of a very in- fluential party in Nice, whose organ is precisely the Eclaireur. Had a revolution broken out in Paris, the Civic Guard could easily have been per- suaded to invade the Prefecture and make the Prefect a prisoner in the name of the new Govern- ment set up in Paris, whatever it might have been. This Civic Guard was largely recruited from the paid electoral propagandists, whose business it has been to preach in every quarter of Nice in view of the municipal and parliamentary elections, the same political doctrine, and relate the same story. They had done their work so well, in this instance, that they had succeeded in making a considerable section of the Nice population look upon the Pre- fect as a German spy, which certain indiscreet actions on his part served, in the minds of the ignorant, to confirm. So intense was the feeling that recently, when the Terminus Hotel was sacked, the mob was already beginning, before it was dispersed by the soldiers, to shout "A la Prefec- ture ! ' The origin of all this was that the Prefect 260 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT had prevented certain wealthy provision merchants in Nice from making a huge fortune by speculat-^ ing in food-stuffs. An important grain syndicate • in Nice had in bond a huge quantity of wheat, which not having been turned into flour had not yet paid the duty, which is seven francs per quintal. They had contracts with a number of private firms to supply this wheat at 37 francs 50 per quintal of flour. When the war came two things happened : the duty on imported flour was suppressed, and all contracts for the supply of wheat to private firms were cancelled. The syndicate then went to the Mairie, and said that being patriots they proposed to make an immediate bargain with the municipality for the sale to the Government of all the wheat in their possession, instead of waiting for the price to rise. They would sell all their huge stock for 44 francs per quintal. The munici- pality of Nice accepted this bargain which, reckon- ing in the suppressed 7 francs duty on imported flour, gave this patriotic syndicate an additional profit of 13 francs 50 per quintal of flour on what they would otherwise have gained. But contracts with the municipality have to be approved by the Prefect, who resolutely refused to ratify so one- sided a proposition. This roused against him the hatred of certain people, who found a curious method of adding to his unpopularity. At the time when the question of expelling the Austro-Germans arose, the Prefect nominated a commission to deal with the matter. The commission gave a number of permits to German hotel-keepers and others to remain in Nice; so many, in fact, that it became a public scandal. Later on, when the story that the IN FRANCE 261 Prefect had been the friend of Germany was widely spread abroad, it was the very people who as members of the commission had granted these permits, who pointed to them as furnishing addi- tional proof of the Prefect's German sympathies. The Prefect is a typical Republican functionary, who has achieved popularity in some circles by affable familiarity with people from whom he expects to get very little or nothing, and a rather exaggerated obsequiousness towards the rich and the titled visitors from any country at all who make up the cosmopolitan and somewhat " rastaquouere " smart set of a place like Nice. This latter trait in his character led to close acquaintanceship between the Prefect and a number of wealthy "Austro- Boches," which was most tactless and unneces- sary, and is now an instrument of attack in the hands of the enemy. De Joly, which is the Pre- fect's name, began his political and administrative career as one of the secretaries and proteges of Charles Floquet, who fought the duel with General Boulanger, and was one of the most inflated gas- bags of the old Radical party. It was Floquet who insulted the Czar of Russia at the opening of the Exhibition of 1879 by shouting as he went by, "Et la Pologne, monsieur!" I remember seeing him arrive at a garden-party given by the late Lord Lytton at the British Embassy, accom- panied by Jules Ferry, and both in evening dress. Floquet, seeing people going into the Embassy in morning dress, jumped from his cab and hurried home to change into a frock-coat, but Ferry imper- turbably pursued his way, and wandered about all the afternoon on the lawn of the Embassy garden, 262 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT looking, with his long side-whiskers, exactly like a maitre d'hotel ; in fact, all that saved him from being asked to pour out champagne was the red rosette of the Legion of Honour which he wore in his button-hole. At that time Floquet was President of the Chamber of Deputies, and Ferry President of the Senate. At the moment of meeting H , we saw a crowd watching a huge safe being taken into the shop of a jeweller at the corner of the Place Massena. H said that the only safe that he had ever seen of that size before was in the possession of Auguste Marin, an author, whom I remember as a friend of Alphonse Daudet years ago. Marin recently died at Marseilles, as director of the Old Age Asylum there. In this safe Auguste Marin kept the manu- scripts of his poems, which, according to Hess, were certainly not worthy of any such precautions. "Peut etre il avait peur qu'un editeur lui en prenne ! " I suggested. "Cela, c'est bon," said H , with an air of real contentment. It was now another author speaking. H shared in the belief that the war had brought about a collapse in the old literature, that French literary genius would no longer respond to the old shibboleths, and that even its methods of expression would be vastly affected. The non-literary, active folk in the thick of this war have taught the professional writers lessons in style which are priceless, though their assimila- tion will be difficult. I quoted to H that won- derful phrase, of quite Shakespearean purity, "We'll die hearty ! " which I had heard shouted from the deck of the troopship between Le Havre and South- ampton. How superior in its simple nobility to IN FRANCE 263 the "We about to die salute thee ! " of the Roman gladiators, which no doubt had been polished up in advance by some professional rhetorician. Then, again, there was that superb epitaph "A I " which some wounded English soldiers had scrawled on a precious, because rare, bit of paper on the head- stone of the grave where they had buried a German soldier. For this soldier, hopelessly wounded him- self, had heard the Englishmen calling for "drink." He had asked them to turn him over, which they had managed to do, thinking to alleviate his suffer- ings, but it was to point to his water-bottle, on which he had been lying. Then when they put it to his lips he refused. "No, I die; you drink!" So they had buried him as decently as possible, with a makeshift headstone and epitaph all com- plete. "A i "! When ever before did the "lapi- dary style" reach such perfection? How it blazes! H told me that Paul Adam, the novelist, feeling, no doubt, that the commercial value of the old vocabularies was being threatened, had come to Nice and questioned all the wounded in the hos- pitals as to their experiences, in the hope of getting new and striking formulas of expression. He had been chiefly struck by the phrase employed by one of the patients, who related how he came across two decomposed bodies, of a French and a German soldier, each with the other's bayonet run through him. "When I saw that," he said, "cela m'a fait froid ! " (it made me feel cold !) Nov. i$th. — Very fine, but somewhat colder. Outside the office of the local paper the news was posted up of the sudden death of Lord Roberts. 264 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT This conjures up to me the vision of a London dining-room nearly forty years ago, on the walls of which hang three handsome engravings, portraits of three generals, each a personal gift from the sitter. The one to the left is that of Major-General Sir Frederick Roberts, who is wearing side- whiskers of considerable length. The middle one is of Sir Garnet Wolseley, in a loose field-jacket, the forerunner of khaki, while the one on the right represents Field-Marshal Sir Patrick Grant, in the peaked cap and braided trousers worn in the Crimea. A small boy of eleven points to that of Roberts, and says to his father, "That's the only man of genius in the British Army ! " His father demurs to this verdict as being far too sweeping, and based, moreover, on a complete ignorance of the subject. "However," he adds, "they do think a lot of him in India." What had struck the boy was the look of genius in the eyes, the broad, high forehead, and a something in the general attitude of the figure and expression of the face, which, while very military, was more than military. In any case the boy never forgot the phrase in which he summed up his impression, and has been re- minded of it since by every successive step which Roberts made from his then comparative obscurity to the universal fame in which his glorious career has closed. H N lunched with me to-day. He had just returned from Chaumont, which is a great French military centre in the Vosges, where one of his relatives is at the head of the medical service. There he was told that the French General Staff is discontented with the Belgians for not having IN FRANCE 265 defended Antwerp. They surrendered the city rather than that it should be destroyed by bom- bardment, but it could have held out for at least a month, which would have greatly lightened and facilitated the work of the French left wing. Per- haps this grumble explains a curious word, "bought," "Antwerp bought," which appeared some days, uncensored, in an article by one of the military experts in an English newspaper — a word which, I thought at first, must be a particu- larly unfortunate misprint. If Antwerp was sold, into whose pockets did the money go ? It is a well-known military manoeuvre to mask the move- ments of infantry by a curtain of cavalry. Can it be that the rushing to Antwerp of untrained British marines, half of whose brigade was taken prisoner or interned in Holland, and whose errand is ad- mitted by my Radical friend B to have been more political than military, was meant to mask the sale? Was this another Marconiesque trans- action ? We should have thought so, and probably said so, had French statesmen been concerned, but then, of course, French politics are so much more corrupt than those of Great Britain. Staff officers passing through here to-day say that the Russian Commander-in-Chief has requested Joffre not to do more than just hold the German line for the time being, which, in any case, is pre- cisely what he and the Allies are doing. If the Germans were beaten back, they would entrench themselves for the winter on the Franco-German frontier, and would free a large German army to reinforce their troops on the eastern frontier, and thus retard the Russian advance into Prussia. 266 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT Dining at Torrero's this evening, I was annoyed at the rudeness with which my guest, a Frenchman,, and I were stared at by two young subalterns in uniform eating at a neighbouring table, in com- pany of a young woman of the cocotte class. They apparently took us for German spies, were frankly listening to our conversation and commenting on it, and, in fact, were making themselves deliberately offensive. Every foreigner in Nice is liable to this nuisance, and unfortunately the Nicois, especially when of the middle class, is often a most uncouth bounder, even when in an officer's uniform. He has no precise nationality of his own. Only three days ago, when I was sitting with the Countess at the Tantonville Caf£, I noticed that we were glared at by a greasy old man in a soiled suit of grey dittoes. He subsequently transferred his attentions to a party of Belgian soldiers, all of them wounded, and one wearing an English soldier's cap, having lost his own, presumably, in action. Because this soldier had not a complete uniform — was not "en tenue " — his Greasiness sent for the manager, con- ferred mysteriously with the page-boy, poured out his soul into the bosom of the waiter, and finally, having caused by his antics and jabber a large and threatening crowd to collect outside the cafe, dis- appeared. The manager told me, in answer to my question who this old ass was, that he was a lieu- tenant-colonel attached to the General Staff of the Governor of Nice. "Then why isn't he 'en tenue'?" "Ah," said the manager, who up till then had been showing great suspicion of the Belgians, "that is very true." A Frenchwoman accompanying the Belgian soldiers was specially IN FRANCE 267 indignant. "They risk their lives for us on the battlefield and get wounded," she said, "and are then insulted at Nice by people who are here on a holiday to amuse themselves. C'est d^goutant ! " It is not only disgusting, but imbecile busybodies of the type of the unwashed colonel (who in private life is probably a pork-butcher) constitute a positive public danger. The Petit Nigois to-day is con- strained to issue, for about the fourth time since the war broke out, an appeal to its "dear fellow- citizens" not to molest inoffensive persons in the street, on the suspicion of their being spies, simply because they have not got the black type of the native Nicois, or do not talk French with a bastard Italian accent. The Petit Nigois employs a slightly more deferential phraseology in making these points, but the meaning is the same. The Alsa- tians, it says, naturally speak with a German accent, and some of our best friends, such as the English and the Russians, have, as a rule, fair hair. The paper might have added that the best type of Frenchman has fair hair. A somewhat obsequious letter from the Prefect of Nice appears in the Petit Marseillais, which seeks to refute the accusation made against him of not putting an embargo, as the law requires, upon the property of certain Germans in the department of the Alpes Maritimes. In reply, the Petit Marseil- lais points out that one villa referred to, belonging to a German prince at Cannes, has only just been sequestrated, although the war has now been going on for four months. It is certainly unfortunate for the Prefect that his connections with the Germans should have been so close and cordial. His own 268 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT sister was governess, they say here, in the family of the Austrian consul at Monte Carlo, Jellinek- Mercedes, now universally believed to have been a spy, and she apparently still is. Nov. 16th. — The weather is getting windy, and there will soon be rain. I met G. N in the after- noon, and he expressed the opinion, which I have already put forth in this diary, that when the war comes to an end Europe will have conceived ideals so much higher than those she entertained pre- viously that the suppression of the Monte Carlo gambling-hell will be inevitable. With such a splendid example before her as that of Russia pro- hibiting the sale of all intoxicating drink through- out her entire empire, France will feel herself morally bound to excise this particular cancer of vice and immorality, which has eaten into her side. Nov. iyth. — A curious statement appears in the Petit Marseillais, dated from Bordeaux, according to which liquefied air-shells have been served out to the French artillery for use with the 75-mm. gun. Is this, then, the secret of the much-talked-of Turpin shell, which, I am now told, kills by con- gelation? We have heard of asphyxiation and concussion, but congelation beats them all from the point of view of pure "Jules Verne." I am also told that these shells have been served out to the Russian Army, and are likely to cut a great figure in the siege of Cracow, which is now imminent. This morning, Count , who is a Swiss, IN FRANCE 269 repeated a terrible story of German barbarity which had been related to him by a professed eye-witness, a Belgian refugee now in Nice, a man of position and means. In a village in the neighbourhood of Brussels, the Prussian soldiers pinned all the women inhabitants to their own cottage doors with swords, which they left sticking in them. Some of these women were enceinte, and in these cases the mother and the child were both run through. Count 's friend professes to have actually seen this. There is a great deal of talk, both in private conversations and the Press, as to how the Germans should be dealt with and properly punished, after the war, for the innumerable crimes which they have committed against humanity and civilisation. No effective result will be obtained unless the matter is dealt with ruthlessly and with method. To begin with, it must be constantly borne in mind that the German people, as a whole, are entirely at one with their Government, not only as to the plotting of the war, but as to the manner in which it has been conducted. They have been one and all the accomplices before and after the fact in this campaign of murder and robbery, which the Ger- man Government has been conspiring to bring about in Europe for the past forty-five years. There must be no talk about the war waged by the Allies not being with the German people, but only with its Kaiser and his advisers. The German people have unanimously wanted the war, and egged on the organisers of the war, and have helped by every individual effort of which they were capable, whether by propaganda at home or spying abroad, 270 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT to bring about the war, at a moment chosen in advance, and to make it a success. To prevent such crimes in future, exemplary punishment must be inflicted on the principal culprits, and to repress the propagation of the anti-Christian and anarchical doctrines with which the German people have gradually allowed themselves to be inoculated, under the mask of "kultur." It will be necessary to cut off the stream, with its subsidiary streamlets, at the fountain-head. In the first place, the German Emperor and his family should be put on their trial for murder and robbery and for criminal con- spiracy generally. It is as common criminals that they should be tried, and as convicted felons that they should be punished. They will have been caught red-handed ; they are self-confessed, and they should be duly condemned to the murderer's fate. No murderer, no highwayman nor burglar who has taken life, ever deserved death more richly than does William of Germany with his accom- plice brood of whelps. The fact of his being related to our own reigning family should not save him, and though it is a misfortune for our sovereign that he should have such relations, it would be a much greater national misfortune if that fact should be permitted to screen them from the fate which they have so richly merited. There is a precedent, moreover, which would negative any plea on the part of these Imperial and Royal felons that their sovereign dignity places them above the moral or common law. During the R^gence in France, when the South Sea Bubble was at its height, the Count of Home, who was a mediatised Prince of sovereign IN FRANCE 271 blood, murdered and robbed a moneylender in the Rue de Venise in Paris. In spite of his family connection with the Due d'Orleans, the Regent, and the frenzied appeals of his relations, among whom were a number of reigning German princes, the Count of Home was condemned for his crime to a felon's death, and duly broken on the wheel in the Place de la Greve by the public executioner. 1 Having dealt with the principal criminals, justice should turn its attention to the minor culprits. Foremost among these are the university professors, who have tried to give philosophic and ethical value to crime. They should be sentenced to long terms of penal servitude in proportion to their apprised activity. In the custody of gaolers against whose authority there would be no appeal they would be able to appreciate by per- sonal experience the moral and social effect upon themselves of a condition in which might was right, and individual liberty was wholly subordinate to the accurate working of a governing machine. The next class of people to take in hand should be the German Jews. Among those who have most loudly clamoured in Germany for war, who have displayed the most revolting cynicism in urging on the brigand German government to its work of murder, rapine and theft, are certain Jews. Mr. Maximilian Harden, a Polish Jew, the editor of the Zukunft, is the noisiest, as he is also, perhaps, the most contemptible, of these cosmopolitan ruffians. 1 In refusing to pardon Count de Home in spite of being con- nected with him by marriage, the Due d'Orleans said : "Well, I shall share in the shame ; that ought to console the other relations." And he quoted Corneille's line : " Le crime fait la honte et non pas l'echafaud.'' 272 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT He is the most contemptible because he professes the same rabid hatred of England as does the pure Prussian in his wildest outbursts of aggressive - patriotism. There may be some excuse for the Prussian, but there is none for the Jew, whose race, despised and oppressed in Germany, and even to-day deprived of half of the social rights enjoyed by the native German, has always found a generous protector in the British people and a haven of refuge in the British Empire. When next the Belgians and the French, with the prospect in front of them of their desolated homesteads, are greeted with the century-old whine of the "poor persecuted Jew," let them remember, in addition to many others, Maximilian Harden ; Dernburg, forger extraordinary and liar plenipotentiary, accredited to the United States nation by the German government ; Dr. Peters; Lissauer, the author of the German "Hymn of Hatred against England" ; the staffs of the Frank- furter Zeitung, the Neue Freie Presse of Vienna — all Jews, and among the most active promoters by every unscrupulous means of the war. Disraeli is credited with having said that every country has the Jews it deserves. There is only one country that deserves Harden and Dernburg and Peters : so in this, at least, Germany has amply got her deserts. But when the time for reckoning comes, these Jews who have turned upon the benefactors and saviours of Israel, who have bitten the hand that fed them, who have tried to blackmail the Good Samaritan who washed their leprous sores, should be treated as traitors to their race and destroyed as pestiferous vermin. Then there is the military element of Germany IN FRANCE 273 which will have to be put upon its trial. A careful investigation should be made of all the cases of wanton cruelty perpetrated by order of the German military authorities on defenceless civilians in Belgium, France, and wherever German armies have penetrated, of all breaches of the laws of war, and those responsible should be punished with the utmost rigour. Reports, for instance, have been published of the ill-treatment of British prisoners. These cases should be investigated, and when it is found to be impossible to fix the guilt upon any one singly responsible, an example, according to the rules of war, should be made of the German regiment to which the culprits belonged. Finally, justice might call before her bar to be tried on a charge of manslaughter, the outcome of culpable negligence, those statesmen and public men in England who, while drawing large salaries for watching over the public weal, consistently blinded themselves, in spite of the most urgent warnings, to the German danger. When an engine- driver, by failing to observe the signals, causes a railway accident accompanied by loss of life, it is for manslaughter that he is condemned if negligence can be proved against him, and he is then liable to be sentenced to a long term of imprisonment. The justice of this is incontestable. What then should be the punishment of these drivers of the train of State, to whose incurable stupidity, negli- gence and wilful blindness the war is largely due ? Assuredly the danger signals which they and their friends in England alone failed or refused to see, were numerous and plain enough ! For the collision that came afterwards and the dreadful loss of life 274 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT and property which has ensued it is they who are mainly responsible. The law should also punish them. Nov. 18th. — A new rule has been made which forbids neutrals, Swiss for instance, from being in any way associated actively with the administration of any department of the French Army, including of course, the hospitals and ambulance service. This will be a blow to some of the hotel-keepers here. But the rule has had to be made to prevent the spying on behalf of Germany, which is still going on in France on a large scale, and is, of course, now mainly carried on by neutrals, Italians, Swiss, Americans, etc. Nice is, owing to the neighbourhood of the Italian frontier, a spot particularly favoured by spies, which accounts for the rigour with which the regulations concerning traffic outside the town boundaries are still enforced. Every foreigner is obliged to have a laisser-passer, which is renewable every fortnight, if he wishes to circulate anywhere outside of Nice. I obtained mine this morning without any difficulty or wait- ing. The office where they are delivered— mine was made out for me by a small boy — is now in- stalled at the Opera. De B dined with me to-night at Torrerb's, and expressed himself with deep despondency on the present condition of Spain — Spain, which, he said, had all the elements of greatness, as indeed her great past had proved, but for generations had ob- stinately thrown away all her opportunities of pros- pering. This was owing to the dreadful religious mania with which she was afflicted. Even in music IN FRANCE 275 there was nothing she might not have done. Many a modern musician would laugh if you talked of Spanish music, and yet it had been recently dis- covered that a Spanish composer of the eighteenth century had preceded Wagner in the invention of "the continuous melody." Vittoria was this Spanish composer's name, and he had left behind him nearly a hundred manuscripts of which it was quite likely that Wagner had had cognisance. That Wagner should have stolen the idea for which he subsequently became famous seemed likely enough to both of us. Whatever is made in Germany is either instinct with a fraudulent inten- tion, or the fruit of an accomplished theft. Years ago in Berlin it was a favourite boast of the German engineers that the Krupp firm had been built up on a secret stolen from England. I could not help saying, however, that while duly respecting the "continuous melody," my sincerer sympathies went out to the "incontinuous melody." A Japanese poet, writing in English, has expressed this feeling very beautifully : " It is not so much the song of the bird that enchants me as the silence that follows it." De B said that bull-fighting in Spain is degenerating, for only relatively young and small bulls are now employed; the older full-grown bulls "with necks broad enough to carry a chair" being too dangerous. Mazzantini, whom I had seen in Spain and at Bayonne, was, he said, a very brave man, but not a scientific fighter. The most scientific and the greatest of all bull-fighters was Guerrero, whom I had also seen at work, and he was the last of the bull-fighters who could cope 276 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT with the full-sized bull — the chair-necked bull — in a perfectly faultless and masterly style. The sym- pathies of Spain were with the Allies and France, but her unfortunate political and social condition made it impossible for her to do anything to help them. Nov. igth. — Des G is in half mourning for his nephew a la mode de Bretagne, whose death from wounds was announced in the Eclaireur a day or two ago. He was the son of General Comte des G , and was promoted from sergeant-major to sub-lieutenant on the battlefield, after which he was badly wounded and taken prisoner. According to des G , he was treated at Strasburg with every attention, being nursed by sisters of mercy in a private "klinik," together with three English officers, of whom one was a colonel. Three of the four prisoners died. The bodies were buried in lead coffins to allow of their removal later on. Nov. 20th. — The weather has now turned bitterly cold, and has clouded over. A particularly well- informed Parisian, talking of the effect on the Paris working population of the flight of the President to Bordeaux, and of the special bitterness felt- that Mme. Poincare, who is Pr^sidente of the Red Cross, should have accompanied him, said that there were certain reasons connected with her position in society previous to her marriage to M. Poincare, which induced Mme. Poincare never to leave her husband's side. There was no private circle at the Elys£e outside of the official receptions. The cir- cumstances made it impossible for Mme. Poincare IN FRANCE 277 to remain behind in Paris, even as Presidente of the Red Cross, or to undertake any social representation in her husband's absence. What could chiefly be said to the credit of M. Poincare was that his powers of work were simply amaz- ing, and the reason why he had won such a great success at the Bar was that he personally studied all his briefs, and never cast a pleading twice in the same way. He employed at least two hundred secretaries at the Elysee, for he insisted upon every letter addressed to him receiving a reply. My friend, who had been losing a little money at the Sporting Club at Monte Carlo, where two roulette tables are now working, says that the visitors there are nearly all wealthy Jews of various nationalities, but chiefly Polish and Russian with many flashy women. The play is very high, and no one looking on would imagine for a moment that war was thundering at the gates. Quite spon- taneously the Parisian uttered the strong conviction that after the war the French Government would find itself morally obliged to do away with Monte Carlo. To talk of Monaco as an independent prin- cipality was wildly farcical. It was entirely under French administration, to such an extent that it had become necessary to draft a strong detachment of detectives from Paris into Monte Carlo to deal with the numerous spies and undesirable foreigners who had made it their head-quarters since the war. This also showed that the vaunted police system of Monte Carlo, which was supposed to watch so closely all strangers who arrived, that not only could they do no harm, but no harm could come to them, was a silly myth. SEVENTEENTH WEEK Nov. 21st to 23rd. — Rain, rain, rain in torrents culminating to-day (23rd) in a violent thunderstorm. We are all hanging on the news from the Russo- Polish frontier, having been taught to believe that if the Russians win, and we are told that they ought to win, the rapid invasion of Germany will follow. On the western frontier we are alternately led to think that the Germans are preparing a retreat into Belgium, and that they are going to make one last vast effort to reach Calais by the 10th of Decem- ber. S has sent me a cheerful letter from his training camp on Salisbury Plain. He says the army will be ready to start for the front by next spring at the latest. I note that his regiment is already furnished with crested note-paper. They have got that at any rate, if they have got nothing else. Nov. 24th. — The fine weather has returned, though the prospects of sunshine are not quite so settled as they were a month ago. H N is in high feather because Litvinne is enthusiastic about his "Belgian Hymn," and is going to sing it everywhere, beginning at Bordeaux. One of his relations who occupied an important post at Le Creuzot has told him that a new French siege gun superior in every way to the vaunted German 420 278 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT 279 is now ready, which will demolish all the German forts with greatest ease. Unlike the heavy German guns, its traction is purely motor, and there is no difficulty in handling it. I have received a charming post-card from D , who is now in command of a company of marines in the neighbourhood of Dixmude. He writes : "Je vous ecris d'un ravinement sous-sol avec chauf- fage central pres de ce qui fut Caeskerke — aux environs de ce qui fut Dixmude. Nous menons ici une existence passionante en compagnie d'une espece de souris des champs infiniment gracieuse et sous une pluie inoffensive et musicale de shrapnels et autres douceurs. Le spectacle de ce fut une ville ou une maison est quelque chose de bien persuasif pour les destinies spirituelles de l'espece. C'est etonnant comme on se passe de tout ce qui est appele' civilisation, progres, etc. La paix est semblable a une vieille dame maniaque et gemissante. Et comment vous dire cette prodigi- euse bonne humeur — ce contentement d'une com- pagnie sur la ligne de feu ? " D , who is an artist to his finger-tips, is one of the best "poin- teurs" in the French Navy, and I have no doubt that his gunnery, which often won the first prize in the inter-battleship competitions, is doing brilliant execution. In my reply I wrote to him: "Je sais ce dont vous etes capable comme cannonier. Mon Dieu, comme vous avez du ^crabouille les ' boches ' ! Je vous vois a l'ceuvre — le parfait artiste. Quel coup d'ceil ; quelle surete' de main ! Si les allemands n'^taient pas incapable to toute Amotion artistique, se serait avec une jouissance exquise qu'ils sauteraient en miettes aux appels 280 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT graves et rhythmiques de votre tir de Hofkapell- meister de la Mort." The Countess has learned that her son Roger has gone to the front, and she has had no opportunity of seeing him before his departure, and bidding him good-bye. He appears to have concealed the date when his regiment would start, probably with the object of avoiding lachrymose scenes. The Coun- tess was tearful to-day, and thought it brutal of me when I quoted to her the wise American saying: "Don't howl until you're hit!" But brutal as the advice may be, I find that it sinks in, and in the long run has a quieting and consoling effect. Nov. 25th. — A long extract is published in the papers to-day from the Bulletin des Armees, announcing the definite defeat of the German operations in Flanders. In a further column, how- ever, it is said that the Germans are preparing another attack and more violent than ever before on the French left wing in the neighbourhood of Ypres. So perhaps it is a little early to talk of a definite French victory. This story in the Bulle- tin prepared for the consumption of French soldiers says next to nothing about what the British have done, and conveys the impression that but for the French the British could not have stood their ground. There is no allusion, either, to the work of the British fleet in clearing away the enemy from the coast between Ostend and Dun- kerque. The repulse of the Germans from the sea- coast to Arras is attributed solely to the French army. Of course, it is inevitable that sooner or IN FRANCE 281 later, partially because it is their nature to do so, and partially for political reasons, the French his- torians of the war will begin to attribute the chief glory of the operations to the French Generals and the French troops. They did so after Crimea, and they may be relied on to do it again. But as I have more than once remarked to French friends, the difference between English and French is that the former fight for victory and the latter for glory. It is the difference between "la galette " and "la galerie." The word "glory" has ceased almost to belong to the English language, it is so little used. It may figure in Latin in the mottoes of English regimental devices, but hardly anywhere else. We talk of the "field of battle"; the French call it the "field of honour." There is the same difference in the tone of the newspaper articles in the two countries. In the English Press, a cool, practical and calculatedly modest style is maintained : modest to the extent of exaggerating the credit of a most ungenerous enemy, the poetry about the war never rises above the dead-and-dun level of rhymed prose ; while the French leader-writers, on the contrary, chant one long continuous pasan of self-praise and self-congratulation, addressed it is true to "France " and to "le Francais," but every individual French- man accepts it as applying directly to himself. It is one of the great advantages of the French, as it is of the Germans, that they have the supreme rallying words "France," " Deutschland," around which all the component races of the two countries can respectively group themselves in one coherent movement of patriotism. This is only possible, of course, because "France" and "Germany" repre- 282 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT sent what is really not tangibly existent. The British Empire lacks such a rallying word, and it is because England does, with a distinct personality - of her own, tangibly exist, that "England" has of recent years ceased to be the rally-word of the British Empire. To-day, if Nelson were alive to tell us that "England expects every man to do his duty," some Scotchman would raise a question about it in the House of Commons, and Nelson would be disowned and blamed by a First Lord of the Admiralty who might be of American descent with a touch of the tar-brush, or a German Jew. Unfortunately nothing has taken the place of that grand, old, though now discredited, rally-word "England," which flamed through the fleet at Trafalgar, and is associated in one of our most rousing national songs with " Home and Beauty " ; and at the risk of offending my Irish, Scotch, Welsh and Jew friends, the reason is, I am afraid, that nothing can or ever will. "Great Britain" like "Britannia " is too much of a mouthful, so perforce we have to do without a "rally word," which from the patriotic point of view places us at a disadvan- tage as compared with France and Germany. As to the average Frenchman's vanity — there are many exceptions, of course— with regard to everything French, I am far from not sympathising with it. It has one advantage. It enables the French poets to write patriotic poetry, which is poetry, and very different from the mindless, circumspect doggerel which passes for such in England. Nothing that the combined efforts of Newbolt, Noyes/ Watson, Kipling, and the other English highflyers has produced to stir the national heart IN FRANCE 283 since the war began is on a level with even the interior work of Deroulede. On this same subject of patriotism an interesting article by Mr. Blatchford appeared in yesterday's Daily Mail, severely taking to task Mr. George Bernard Shaw. Mr. Shaw apparently wrote that "he has an Irish capacity for criticising England with something of the detachment of a foreigner." There you have it. What Breton, or Norman, or Picard, or Provencal would ever say that he had a Breton or the-rest-of-it-capacity for criticising France as a foreigner ? Here we are French first and Bretons afterwards, because France, one and indivisible, is the rallying-word for all of us. The same in Germany. Prussians, Bavarians, Saxons and Austrians can all shout : " Deutschland, Deutschland liber alles ! " In the absence of a rallying word the English have to put up with Shaw, which is not a compensation. However, it is a mistake for Mr. Blatchford to treat him seriously, or demand that his articles should be sup- pressed by the censor. Shaw's battles have all been fought in teacups. He might be described as the British Muffineer, for, as the French would say, in "muffineer " there is "muff," and all his life long he has done nothing else but scatter salt and pepper in very moderate quantities on the mental muffins which are the controversial diet of super-suburban tea-fights. He has been looked upon as a daring thinker and wild paradoxer because he has pelted a respectable and respectful section of the British public with fresh eggs and carefully peeled potatoes. It was a most heroic attitude that he struck, to the accompaniment of stage thunder and blue fire — as 284 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT if a dead plant or a plucked fruit isn't just as much a corpse as a dead pig — when he publicly pro^ claimed himself to be a vegetarian. All England" was stirred by it. I remember going into Covent Garden Market afterwards to buy some grapes for my invalid mother, but in the shop which I entered there was no means of getting served. "What is the price of those gr ? " "Jack, have you sent off them rennet apples to George Bernard Shaw, Esq. ?" "Yes, sir!" "Would you mind telling me ?" "And them Duchesse pears, Jack, have vou packed 'em up to go to George Bernard Shaw, Esq.?" "Not yet, sir." "Look sharp, Jack!" "Those gr ?" "What about that there box o' oranges for George Bernard Shaw, Esq.?" "They've gone, sir." There was clearly no room for my humble personality, and I retired in bad order. The greengrocer's face was ruddily radi- ant and his eyes gleamed emptily with the reflected glory of his illustrious vegetarian customer. George Bernard Shaw, Esq., filled him and fitted him. George Bernard Shaw, Esq.'s piffle only serves to throw up into relief what has already become evident not only in France, but in England, the dwindling away into nothing of the "literary man," and of "literature" in the huge shadow thrown by this real, colossal war. Nov. 26th. — Young I , who is a Russian, but is serving in the French Army as a corporal, and is stationed at Marseilles, said this afternoon that he had himself seen Joffre's order for a list to be made out of all the soldiers in the French Army who speak German, in view of their being employed IN FRANCE 285 as "gardes civiques " in Germany. This would show — if it is true— that Joffre expects to be able to invade Germany before long-. Nov. 2"]th.— Waking early, just about three in the morning, when one's vitality is lowest, and the tendency to be anxious as to the outlook is greater than at any other time of the day, the idea haunted me l that the Canopus, of which no news has been published since she failed to get to the rescue of Admiral Cradock, must have been blown up by an infernal machine placed inside her by a German spy. For years past I have predicted to my English friends, some of whom listened, but most of whom did not, that such methods would be adopted by the Germans for dealing with the British fleet in the event of war. When the papers were brought to me at half-past seven I read that the Bulwark had been blown up at Sheerness with all on board, a loss of over 800 men. Winston Churchill has apparently convinced himself and the British House of Commons that this was a pure accident, which might happen in the best-regulated navy. And so, I presume, they will go on humbugging one another to the end of the chapter. I am again reminded of what I told S at Bordeaux, to look out for naval catastrophes, now that the British Navy is under new auspices. This is number three since that eventful date. There is a mysterious reference in the French papers to-day to an accident reported to have happened to the British super-Dreadnought Audacious off the coast of Ireland, but it is sug- gested that there is no truth in the story. 1 This was an error. 286 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT Churchill's statement in the House that the loss of the Bulwark will not affect the military situation" is patently absurd. From the statistics supplied by the Admiralty, the British Navy has already lost over 7,000 killed and drowned ! How are they to be replaced ? That the British Government is in a very unenviable frame of mind is proved by the fact that in their new Press Bill they propose to bring before a court-martial any one accused of suggesting that they are incompetent to manage the nation's business. The Marquis de B , who is a friend of Don Jaime, the Legitimist Carlist Pretender to the Spanish throne, says that when that Prince was passing through Nice some time ago he spoke in very disparaging terms of General von Rennen- kampf, who was beaten at the outset of the war by Hindenburg. According to Don Jaime, von Rennenkampf was a "faiseur" (a boaster), an in- corrigible looter (all the qualities, in fact, of his German descent), and a quite incompetent general. This verdict on him is confirmed by an article which appears to-day in the Eclair eur by General Mouravieff-Amoursky, formerly Russian Military Attache" in Paris, and by the fact that he has been superseded in his command by the famous Bul- garian General Dimitrieff. There is some anxiety about the great German attack announced to be impending against Ypres. EIGHTEENTH WEEK Nov. 28th A well-to-do inhabitant of Nice, named C , who is in the Field Artillery and has been wounded by a shell splinter in the leg, said to-day that though his wound is not yet healed, he is being sent back by the Medical Service to the depot of his regiment, so as to be able to start for the front again as soon as he can ride and walk. He said that those the Medical Board examined who had already been wounded were, as a rule, anxious to get back to the firing line, either because they now knew exactly what a gun- shot wound amounted to, or because they wanted to pay off the old score; but that the fresh recruits, almost to a man, did their "level best" to induce the doctors to dismiss them as unfit for service. He said that the "frousse" of these young Nicois was unlike anything he had seen before. I asked him if he could describe the sensation when he got his wound. He said it was like being felled by a mallet — a great shock. But there was little or no pain until the Red Cross orderly began taking off the puttee caked with blood from his wounded leg. Then the pain was severe. This compares with the description given me by a pleasant-faced Nor- man lad from Havre who was in the railway car- riage between Paris and Angouleme on my journey to Bordeaux. He had been shot in the fleshy part 287 288 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT of the thigh. "It was like a steel skewer being driven in ; but driven in very hard and far ! And it burnt, too. The bullets must be very hot when they leave the rifle-barrels." C said that in the retreat from Mons, where he was wounded, one infantry regiment, the 338th, which started 3,500 strong, got back with eighty men. Such was the deadly effect of the German mitrailleuses. In the evening W turned up from Marseilles. He had some curious stories to tell about the English interpreters whom he had met there. One of them is a Mr. C D , heir to the dukedom of , who appears to be looked up to by the others as a kind of social monitor and master of the revels. The interpreters have to report them- selves once a day at head-quarters, after which there is nothing for them to do, as a rule, but to wander about the town, and kill the time between meals at the different cafes and bars. The result has been that one has already been court-martialled and dismissed the army for drunkenness. Another — probably as a result of alcoholic hysteria — was so afraid of being sent to the front that he was with difficulty prevented from committing suicide by shooting himself with his revolver, which W— — managed to take from him. Instances of this curious preference to take one's own life rather than face death on the battlefield seem not to be infre- quent, but especially so in the German army. IN FRANCE 289 Monte Carlo Nov. 2gth. — Crowded with French soldiers, and there is no pretence made now about the indepen- dent sovereignty of the Prince of Monaco, or that the place is not in French possession. The old rule which obliged French soldiers in uniform to enter Monaco by a circuitous route instead of the highway and without arms has been done away with. I saw L , who is in mourning for his brother, killed in the battle of the Marne. He is going again before the Medical Board in a day or two, and feels sure that this time he will be accepted. He says that unless you have a limb amputated, or are blind, you are now certain to be passed as good for service. How different from what he related when I last saw him ! Nice Nov. 30f/t Dined with de B at his flat, when a great argument arose between him and V as to whether the modern Alsatian is ger- manised or not. V , who has recently travelled in Alsace, declared that the impression produced upon him was that while the survivors of the population that had lived under the French regime are still faithful to the French tradition and lan- guage, their grandchildren, who have been born and brought up as Germans, have lost all interest in or sympathy with France. De B opposes to this the case of his " bonne " (certainly an excellent cook), who, though of good family and not without means, T 290 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT prefers to undertake domestic service in France rather than suffer the German yoke. Her brother, who is of the present generation, has renounced large proprietary interests in his native Alsace for the same reason, so that this attitude is not confined to sentimental females. One other brother, a young man of exceptional strength and originally of robust health, came home from his service in the German Army only to die, in consequence of the brutal treatment which had been inflicted on him as an Alsatian. The Alsatians who accepted and pre- tended to be content with Prussian rule were known as "profiteurs," and were despised by the great majority of their compatriots. There is, no doubt, a good deal in favour of both arguments. My own impression is that when Alsace and Lorraine are reannexed by France, as they assuredly will be, there must at first be a good deal of disappointment on both sides. It is the Catholic clergy who have been among the most active inspirers of the national pro-French movement in Alsace. It is not likely that these priests will be satisfied with the treatment that the French Republic metes out to the Catholic Church. Then there will be problems of taxation which are likely to cause debate. From what I have myself been able to gather, the Alsatians (if not the Lorrainers) would like to be made into a kind of independent buffer State. But I doubt whether this would satisfy the French. Dec. ist. — I have received an amusing letter from D . He writes: "Mon bien cher ami, Je fais comme vous — je visite quelques champs de bataille — et me suis procure un fauteuil d'orchestre Ier IN FRANCE 291 rang pour ce prodigieux spectacle. On m'a confie" le commandement d'une compagnie de marins dont je suis le 3eme capitaine, et qui, ces jours derniers a vu son effectif passer de 220 a 60 dans les tranches de Dixmude. Ales camarades ici sont charmants. Je crois que la guerre comme la plus part des maladies a une influence des plus favor- ables sur l'intelligence et les manieres du commun des mortels. Pourquoi ne venez pas un peu de ce cote faire connaissance avec la musique si delicate des ' marmites/ et des ' shrapnels ' ; avec leur traits, leurs glisses et leurs points d'orgues. Je vous trouverez une bonne place aupres de moi. Pour le moment nous couchons dans l'^glise de Loo qui est fort belle, mais la guerre est encore tellement plus belle que tous les ceuvres d'art paraissant un peu fades. Addio. Donnez moi de vos nouvelles et dites moi ce que vous avez vu a Bordeaux. Affectueusement votre P. D." Dec. 2nd — Accompanied by young R I took the tram at seven in the morning for Levens, whence I proposed to take a day-long walk in the country. At Levens we decided, on the advice of the innkeeper's wife, to walk in the direction of the mountains to Duranus, come back to lunch, and then pass along the valley of the Vesubie to its junction with the Var, where a train could be caught to Nice. The roads were thickly covered with rime where the sun did not reach, and the air was deliciously brisk and refreshing. Above all, the atmosphere of peace was so impressive. On our return to Levens we crossed a party of Belgian refugees who have taken up their quarters here. 292 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT The landlady of the inn told us that they lived on public and private charity, and declined to do any work, on the ground that they had fought and suffered for France, who must now look after them. The villagers accept this point of view good- humouredly enough, but at the same time think that their guests might better employ their time than by strolling about the country roads. Levens, though it has only a population of 1,500, has already lost fifteen killed in the war. According to the landlady, a great deal of favouritism had been shown in the recruiting, fathers of families of three, five and seven children being taken and sent to the front, because they had no money, and con- sequently no local influence, while wealthy bachelors have managed to get easy posts miles and miles behind the fighting line. Three of these pater- familias are among the dead. We lunched excellently in a blaze of sunshine, with the window-doors wide open. The country- side is still very green and lovely, covered with juniper trees, as underwood, beneath the bronze- green of the olive groves, with a few scabiouses, blue and white, lingering lavender, and scarce red and yellow roses straggling in the hedges. With the light blue sky and the white dry roads one might have been in England towards the end of a fine August. Dec. 3rd. — Letters from B and J. de B . The former writes: "C has gone out with about seventy other men to my brother's ambulance corps, which is now entitled ' The First Anglo- Belgian Ambulance Corps. They are, however, IN FRANCE 293 working for the French Government, and the last note I had from my brother was that they were going to stay with the French now until they arrived in Berlin, always presuming that they get there in our lifetime. "Very many thanks for your kind offer of intro- duction to Monsieur . As a matter of fact, my negotiations came to very little. There was an old man, Monsieur Vaillard, who was the active chief of Sanitary Staff and supervised all the French R.A.M.C. work, and my senators and other influential people proved powerless to move him. They have now got thoroughly front line work, and a hospital of their own at Dunkirk, so I am not bothering further about the matter." I have sent B a cutting from yesterday's Temps praising the hospital work of the Society of Friends. They are described as chiefly em- ployed in taking the necessary measures for ward- ing off epidemics which are likely to break out in the spring, and as having established a lying-in hospital at Chalons, where, "with the help of ingenuity and tenderness, a real well-being will in future surround the poor mothers." J. de B writes that he is beginning to feel the cold, so I presume that he must have reached the front. He asks me to send him a small packet of chocolate and tobacco, for where he is there is nothing of the kind to be obtained. The Countess undertook to arrange this, and prepared a little box weighing just over two pounds and a half. The rule, however, is that any package over a pound has to be sent to the d£pot of the regiment, which in this instance is at Vannes in Brittany, a sadly 294 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT circuitous route ! On the strength of an experience related by de B , I have warned J. de B that should he get frost-bitten on no account to treat the frozen part with hot water. The officers are beginning to show themselves in the new sky-blue, or rather air-blue, uniforms which are to take the place of the blue and red that made the French soldier such a deadly sure mark for the enemy's bullets. The colour has been decided upon after a most careful and scientific search for the tint which breaks away least from the surrounding landscape and air-line at a dis- tance, and the French believe that they have got something which is superior to the English khaki and the mignonette-green and grey of the Germans. The experiments were carried out with checks and bands of different neutral tints, such as those in certain Scotch tartans. Our friend C , however, who has returned wounded from the front, main- tains that the question of colour, considering the great range of modern weapons, really matters very little. The red trousers of the French soldier are of Louis-Philippe origin — introduced in 1828 by a certain Vicomte de Vaux. It is a mistake to attribute them to Napoleon. Dec. 4th — G caused much excitement and discussion in the Committee of National Safety by bringing in a copy of the New York Times, of about three weeks back, which contains a very full and circumstantial account of the sinking of the British super-Dreadnought the on the coast of Ireland, after striking a mine. The crew, with the excep- tion of two, were rescued by the liner Olympic, IN FRANCE 295 The censorship in England has managed to sup- press the news of this catastrophe almost completely, and only vague references have so far been made to it in the French and Italian Press, for which there has been no confirmation. The American Press says that the British censorship has kept the news back so that the Germans may remain in the dark as long as possible. They say that the same tactics were employed with respect to the reported landing of Russian troops in France some weeks ago, the unconfirmed and uncontradicted news of which is thought to have perplexed the Germans a good deal. This seems a very specious sort of excuse. The far more probable explanation is that Winston Churchill fears "to face the music." There can be no doubt whatever that the report in the New York Times is substantially true, although de B still contends that it may be an invention, for otherwise, he says, it would have been known in Europe before. But the story, which he had not read, is clearly not wholly a "fake." NINETEENTH WEEK Dec. $th. — The Temps to-day has an article by Monsieur Abel Hermant, the dramatic critic and author of plays, entitled "The ' Common Sense ' of Bernard Shaw," which contains some home-thrusts. He points out that, since the beginning of the war, it is to the credit of the writers on the Anglo-French side that hardly one of those "inconvenances " ("inconvenance " is a mixture of vulgarity, stupid- ity and bad taste) has been committed before which censorship is disarmed. "I say hardly one, but I know of one ; the author of which is, as was to be expected, Mr. Bernard Shaw. ' Inconvenance ' is the ideal of Mr. Bernard Shaw ; it is, properly speaking, his sole excuse for existence. To shock is his great idea. Certainly a free man ought to be free of speech and not care whether he shocks or not, but I know of nothing more puerile or silly than to be continually bent on scandalising people-." But M. Hermant thinks that Mr. Shaw is above all inoffensive (his shocks mainly startle himself), and is struck by the "prodigious fatuity of this ' maker of comedies,' to use the expression of Socrates, who thinks that his ' innate dramatic faculty ' makes him competent to judge and decide everything." He mentions Balzac as having had this same pretension in some measure, but with this difference, that at least he went to the fountain- 396 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT 297 head of science for his facts, and did not think himself innate with science because he was an author of imaginative literature. "We have been ill and suffering from a little too much literature," concludes M. Abel Hermant. "This, perhaps, is the war that we needed. I think that we are cured, and for a long time." Hear, hear ! Dec. 6th — In the morning a Roumanian officer just arrived via Vienna with a special mission told us that Roumania, and with her Italy, were certain to throw in their lot with the Triple Entente before long. The late King of Roumania died of a broken heart because his Ministers refused to allow him to join hands with the Triple Alliance. A secret under- standing certainly existed now between Roumania and Italy. Roumania had at present 800,000 men ready, but was lacking in cartridges. These she would get from Russia. He was an eye-witness of the fact that every Russian artillery regiment comprised a certain number of Japanese officers, presumably to work the heavy artillery which Japan has pro- mised to lend to the Russians, and has probably furnished by this time. He expressed the highest opinion of the fighting qualities of the Russian Army, of its organisation, and the talent of its commanders, and said that as soon as it was fully ready to put forth all its strength it would make mincemeat of the Germans. In the afternoon Comte G , who had been lunching with Mrs. T at Monte Carlo, related what had been told him by a Mrs. M , an American, who has just got back from Berlin. Mrs. M 's daughter is a great favourite with 298 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT the Kaiser, and frequently dines with him. She said that the German Emperor is changed beyond, recognition. He is constantly travelling about from the eastern to the western theatre of war, and on these trips has always been accompanied by the Empress, who is now suffering greatly from fatigue. The war had been prepared six months before it was declared, and up till that date the Emperor had been a partisan of peace, but was then over- ridden by the Crown Prince and the War Party. To the very last M. Cambon, the French Ambas- sador, refused to believe that war was impending, although repeatedly warned as to the real facts of the case by the French military and naval attaches, one of whom was his own son-in-law. He snubbed them for showing "too much zeal." In Berlin life has not changed. Food is abun- dant, the people are happy and confident ; there is, however, just a little financial pinch beginning to be felt. For the present German dreams of con- quest remain unshattered. Prince Eitel is to be King of Belgium — a larger Belgium to include French Flanders and the Champagne district. The English officers who are prisoners in Germany have been submitted to specially bad treatment. In Dresden, where there are 1,200 of them, they have been herded with common French soldiers, and made to eat out of the same gamelle, or food-tin, with them, although all of these officers are, as the Germans well know, men of refinement and good family. As a result three of them have committed suicide, and the American special envoy is making diligent efforts to have their lot alleviated. If this story is true it should be read in the light of the IN FRANCE 299 description by an eye-witness in yesterday's Daily Mail of the luxurious accommodation afforded to the German prisoners in Wales. According to the same lady, who claims very high authority for what she says, the Japanese have offered 500,000 men to the French Government on condition that Indo- China is ceded to them after the war, and this proposition is now being considered at Bordeaux. Whether this be true or not, I have certainly always been told by French travellers who have made a study of Indo-China, that it was certain to become Japanese sooner or later. Another item of gossip from Berlin was that Princess von Pless, who was formerly a Miss Corn- wallis West, wears a wonderfully and fearfully bejewelled red cross at the infirmary where she is working, and has become intensely anti-English. What would her poor mother have said to this ? As a set-off to Prince Eitel's aspirations to the Belgian Crown, the Allies are credited with the intention of compensating King Albert, after the war, with the title of Emperor of the Belgians, the new Belgium to include Rhenish Prussia up to and including Cologne. Madame N , who is just recovering from a bad attack of influenza, and to whom I took some flowers, tackled me on a subject which I have already heard raised by French people, namely the possibility of serious disputes arising between France and England when the final settlement has to be made after the war. There is a section of French opinion which is already beginning to hold that the English have done very little in the war, the chief brunt of which has been borne by the 800 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT French and the Russians, and their reward should be proportionately small. My answer has always been to point out, as on this occasion to Madame N , the huge importance of what the British fleet has really effected, undramatic though it may be, especially in the eyes of the stay-at-homes, by retaining the mastery of the sea, and enabling the British reinforcements to reach the Continent at a very critical moment. The total suppression of German export trade and the practical blockade which she is undergoing are also not small things, though their effect may not be immediately apparent. I took the occasion, at the risk of caus- ing some offence, of pointing out one serious defect in the old and pre-entente-cordiale diplomacy adopted by the French towards England. It always started with the assumption that England would want to get more than her due, that Albion was a priori "perfide." With this prejudice in their minds, the French diplomatists thought it necessary on their side to begin by refusing or disputing everything, and asking twice more than they had any claim to in the hope of getting half. This is a national characteristic running through all busi- ness negotiations undertaken by Frenchmen, whether with foreigners or among themselves. Its sole result is to cause a vast deal of unnecessary squabbling and heart-burning, accompanied by lack of confidence on both sides. But England is now so beloved by the mass of the French people that even the diplomatists would be forced by public opinion to abandon their habitual tactics in dealing with her in future. Madame N has learned from her husband, IN FRANCE 301 who, being the director of a ministerial organ, is in touch with the Government, that England has of late been busily working Bavaria, to induce her to detach herself from Prussia, and conclude an independent peace. In Bordeaux it is believed that these negotiations are quite likely to be successful. The fact that a special British envoy has recently been appointed to the Vatican lends some colour to the report, for Bavaria has always been very much under papal influence. But I fancy that both in England and France the potency of the national watchword "Deutschland, Deutschland, iiber alles," even as regards Bavaria, is under-estimated. Dec. yth. — Received a letter from O , in which he says that times in London are so bad, for him in any case, that he literally has not enough to eat. There is no doubt that the war is telling terribly upon those who do not come within the scope of any benevolent organisation, and these are the people whom it is most difficult to help — authors, actors, architects, members of most of the liberal professions, publishers even. I went with Th this afternoon to visit the wounded at the Hotel du Pare Imperial. The accommodation is, of course, as good as could be imagined. This magnificent hotel, which went into liquidation last year, is just at the back of and above the Boulevard Gambetta, and commands an ideal view of the sea and the mountain coast. It is surrounded by splendid gardens, and the sun shines on it all day. The patients, however, are only allowed to sun themselves on the terraces and in the garden after luncheon-time, a foolish restric- 302 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT tion very typical of the French Military Medical Service, about which they and the nurses, too,, naturally grumble. Some of them are terribly wounded. One poor chap, a Meridional, who had lost his leg, which could, he thinks, have been saved if it had been attended to with sufficient promptitude, was, nevertheless, full of courage, and congratulating himself that there was still a bit of stump left below the knee. I noticed that while they were full of what one might call resistant spirit, they seemed to have a kind of grievance against all those who were unwounded, to look even upon the sympathetic visitor with a kind of grave reproach, as if to say : "This is what we have done for you, and what is our reward ? Look at what you have brought us to, behold your handi- work ! " For fear of making matters worse, one hardly dares to question people in whom one suspects such a frame of mind, even with the idea of pleasing them by showing interest in their mis- fortune. But, of course, the ice is soon broken. I could hardly keep back tears at the sight of the poor lad minus a leg, and a few other essentials to happiness, trying to look brave and trustful in the future over it all, but Th said that the right thing to do was to make things seem as bright as possible. I wonder if that is so. At one time his cheeriness jarred on me so much when he was trying to comfort a man who had lost — well, I won't say what, that I patted him ironically on the back and said, "Mais vous avez du courage, mon vieux ! " He still contended, on the strength of a lengthy experience, that the patient was always grateful and encouraged if you told him that there IN FRANCE 303 was practically nothing the matter with him and that it would all come right in the end. A Parisian, very badly wounded, told us that he had feared the nursing by ladies would be inferior to that of the "femme du peuple." But it was not so. Another patient, a very dark, southern-looking man of about thirty, with heavy, strongly-marked features, had been stricken deaf and dumb. It was still possible to communicate with him in writing, though his wits were in a general way somewhat confused, but owing to the mental and nervous disturbance caused, no doubt, by the explosion of a shell, he had entirely lost the power of both speech and hearing. The doctors are hopeful that he may be cured. He has no bodily wound of any kind. Another patient I was told of, who has now left the hospital, was totally blind, though there was nothing whatever abnormal in the appearance of his eyes. The impression I had very soon after the begin- ning of the war that an entirely new epoch was dawning for both art and literature is expressed to-day by Camille Mauclair, a writer and art critic of some notoriety, who is known for having written a good deal in praise of the sculptor Rodin. He says "let us banish that stupid and shameful litera- ture, based on the novel of dolls, the adultery drama, the dirty vaudeville and the degraded music-hall. . . ." It is equally necessary to bury under definite contempt decadent poetry, the cult for the madman Nietzsche, the ridiculous "inde- pendent " painting and the evanescent music of yesterday. "Keep your pen blunt and your ink dry," a parody of the threadbare German wheeze : 804 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT "Keep your sword sharpened and your powder dry," is in M. Mauclair's opinion the watchword for literature, at least for the time being. In a letter received here from the composer Noel Desjoyaux, who is at the front, and addressed to M. Jehin, the conductor of the orchestra of the opera at Monte Carlo, he says that nothing that has been done in music hitherto, not even in Renaud, to imitate the noise of battle, is anything like the modern reality. "It would be a good thing for composers to pay a visit to the firing-line to re- plenish their stock-in-trade. It is an infernal noise, with howlings and snorings, for which even Sainte-Marie's ' monster,' the counter-bass clarin- ette of the Monte Carlo orchestra, would not suffice. "On the other hand, in the trenches it is another affair : harmonica, accordeons, flutes, hautbois and bizarre instruments and songs which have nothing in common with the sad or sentimental lieds which issue from the ' boche ' caves — fifteen yards off in places. There are some musicians at the front, Wolff, the conductor of the Opera Comique, the author of the ' Marchand des Masques,' created at the Nice OpeVa last season, who is a stretcherman with a fine baritone voice, the son of Feraudy the actor, who is a good tenor, and on All Saints' Day a gregorian ' Alleluia ' was produced in the trenches, which was not worth Engelberg, but was still too good to be appreciated by the audience." Dec. 8th — Dined to-night with the N s and with R , who is one of the chief manufacturers of perfumery at Grasse and in the region. The losses caused to this branch of industry have been IN FRANCE 805 great. R has over a million and a half francs' worth of bills against customers in Germany and Austria, which now have very little chance of being paid. Only one-sixth of the jasmine crop was plucked this year, and this mainly in order to keep the plants in proper condition. He was in favour, of course, of the proposal made by the Petit Nigois to change the name of eau-de-Cologne to eau-de- Provence, and agreed with me, as against Madame N , that "eau-de-Pologne " was too suggestive of an insecticide (this with all due respect to the Poles). Nearly all the production of essential oils in the Riviera was sent to Germany and Austria, Cologne purchasing a huge quantity of orange- water, which entered largely into the composition of the famous "eau." But it was a mistake to suppose that "eau de Cologne" contained, as a rule, much lavender water. It was only the "eau-de-Cologne" specially manufactured for the English which con- tained any notable proportion of it, the English being particularly fond of the odour of lavender, while the French and Germans are not. I again had to take up the cudgels for the English fleet. R said to me rather solemnly (I think he had been put up to it), "Can you tell me where your fleet is?" I replied, "I might ask you where yours is. A portion of ours is at the bottom of the sea. We have already lost nearly 10,000 men, equivalent to the crews of ten first-class battle- ships. The only vessel you seem to have lost is the Mousquet, with perhaps 250 men in all. In order to keep the mastery of the sea, which has enabled us to reinforce you on the Continent at a very critical moment, we have had to take risks, u 806 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT and the task has entailed a certain number of ' pots casses.' Thanks to the mastery of the sea we were, able, by a naval bombardment which took the Germans completely by surprise and did them a heap of damage, to prevent your left wing being enveloped at Ostend; to destroy German oversea commerce as completely as your industries have been smashed up in the North of France; and to seriously interfere with the provisioning of the Germans with everything they are obliged to import. Of course, there is little in all this that is theatrical or dramatic or can be put on a cinematograph film, but it is of vital importance all the same. In the meanwhile the loss of nearly 10,000 trained men of our fleet is a very sad affair, and it will be a long time before they can be replaced. Mere spectators are always impatient." Dec. gth. — J H , who was originally a medical officer in the French Navy, talking of the curiously capricious visitations of mosquitoes in Nice, all the central part in the lower regions of the Avenue de la Gare being plagued with them, while my district in the upper of the B G is completely free, said that, when in Madagascar he recommended the military authori- ties to supply the men with mosquito nets, he was laughed at and called a lunatic, but he had noticed in his own case that fever invariably followed the mosquito bite. Thus he was on the point of making the discovery, which has since proved so important, that the mosquito inoculated the germs of fever. I capped this with my own discovery made long ago, that mushroom poisoning being IN FRANCE 807 due to an alkaloid should be combated by injec- tions of an acidulated liquid. All microbic poison- ing being due to the spore of a mushroom, should probably be dealt with in the same way. The doctors are beginning to find out that the only cure for tetanus is the injection of carbolic acid into the patient's veins. Serpent bite, which is very similar in some of its effects to poisoning by the deadly amanita mushroom, is curable by injections of an acid. Some years ago in one of his articles in the Temps on rural matters, M. Cunisset-Carnot said that when one of his sporting dogs was bitten by a viper, as happened often, he immediately injected into the wound with a Pravaz syringe a dose of chromic acid, and the dog invariably recovered within a quarter of an hour. It was stated some time afterwards in the Daily Mail that injections with vinegar were found to be so sovereign against snake-bite in India that every chief of a village was supplied by the Government with a bottle of vinegar and a Pravaz syringe, but J H had never heard of this during his lengthy travels in the East, and said that the French doctors in Indo-China used injections of chlorure of gold. Inasmuch as all mushrooms can be ren- dered innocuous by passing them through vinegar, and that soaking in vinegar will sweeten tainted meat, it seemed natural enough that microbic poisoning of any kind should yield to the reaction of an acid. I reminded him, too, that the best cure for mosquito-bite is the application of a hot, saturated solution of boracic acid; I learnt this years ago in Berlin, and, moreover, I found this summer, when dining at Villeneuve-Loubet, where 308 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT mosquitoes were vicious, that the local white wine did equally well. Lord Fisher's son-in-law, Admiral Neeld, and his daughter have been released from a German concentration camp, on the direct intervention of President Wilson with the Kaiser, and without any compensatory concession on the part of Great Britain. Lord Haldane's nephew has also been released from "internment" in Germany. There is something peculiar in this. It was not until Fisher became first sea-lord that the German Emperor was approached in this most singular, unprecedented, and one would have thought, un- necessary way. It looks as if the German Govern- ment had its own reason for not acting earlier, and that the unique method finally adopted for pleasing Fisher had the same motive. To any one acquainted with the methods of diplomacy it is obvious that the suggestion that the American President should intervene, must have come from Germany, to this extent, at any rate, that the American President must have been assured officially that his request would be granted before he made it. He would never have risked a rebuff, nor would Germany have risked being obliged to refuse his request. Lord Haldane, in the "funny " manner with which Liberal humbug is so often bolstered up, talks of his nephew being "for some mysterious reason " detained in Germany. The mystery, however, lies not in that young man's detention, which he shared with quite a number of other young men, but in the reasons for his release ! There is great jubilation over the sinking of the three German cruisers that destroyed the Good IN FRANCE 309 Hope and the Monmouth. A pessimist, however, with past lessons in his memory, might look upon this incident as presaging another of far greater importance, which will produce the very opposite effect upon the public mind. Germany may have accepted the sacrifice of these three cruisers to prevent public opinion in England being too violently animated against the heads of the Admiralty -when a disaster on a hitherto unpre- cedented scale, and due once more to a betrayal, takes place at some near date. I sincerely hope that these suspicions are unjustified, but the future alone can show. In any case I think there is enough in their favour to make them worth recording. Dec. nth. — "Bores, borers, and borrowers" — the positive, comparative and superlative of boredom, is the phrase which the Committee of National Safety, sitting this morning at PomePs, decided to be worthy of universal adoption as best descrip- tive of the "boches." By the way, there is some discussion (and the question was asked me in England) as to the origin of the word "boche." Several solutions have been offered, but there is only one that is genuine. The Germans were known in 1870 as "tetes de bois," and the name, of course, has stuck to them since. The Parisian argot, or slang, for "bois" is "boche," so "tetes de bois" became "tetes de boche," and thus the word "alleboches" (allemands, tetes de boches) was easily formed. "Boches" is, of course, short for "alleboches." Hence, also, "austro-boches," which is, I think, the most comic of all of these appellations. 810 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT The Countess and I walked up to Cimiez this afternoon in glorious sunshine. The great hotels there are converted into military hospitals, and those of the wounded who are sufficiently convales- cent were sunning themselves in the gardens, which, though they have been left fallow this year, still contain flowers and bright shrubs in sufficient quantities to produce a very summer-like effect. I visited for the first time the old monastery garden, from which there is the finest view over the Mediter- ranean and the intervening valley of the Paillon to be obtained near Nice. Since the expulsion of the religious orders, this beautiful old garden with its terraces and avenues of cypress-trees has been suffered to fall into utter ruin, a miserable piece of vandalism for which there was no excuse. And I thought of Reims. In the autumn gloaming the lines of big white villas, with the narrow tramway-laid road between them, leading up to the Cimiez cross, had a depress- ing effect, which I had some difficulty at first in analysing ; and then it struck me that they exactly resembled the rows of white beds in a hospital ward. One had the same sense of their containing invalids, surrounded with every care and luxury, but forced to stop in bed. Here and there an empty villa with a "to let" notice showed that some old "noceur's" number had gone up, and the bed was ready for another patient, sick with ease and pleasure. Owing to the war, Nice and its environs are beginning to look like an abandoned hospital. And with the hotels converted into real hospitals, the impression is all the more intense. TWENTIETH WEEK Dec. 12th. — The chief notes of the day are the jubilation over the British naval victory and the success all along the line (according to the official report) of the new French heavy artillery. Dec. 13th. — A curious telegram is published from London describing the attack of Dover harbour by German submarines. They came on twice in the afternoon at an interval of two hours, and three of them are said to have been destroyed. But "the British Admiralty declares that it has no confirma- tion of this news." What new mystery is this? Perhaps the Italian papers will have some light to throw upon it. In the French papers there is a noticeable tendency to ignore, or to forget the existence of the Austrian Army. To read them, one would think that Germany was fighting single-handed Russia, France and England, and that her defeat for this reason alone is certain. If, however, as still may happen, for all we know, the combined German and Austrian Armies defeat, or seriously check, the Russian Army, there is a possibility that the enemy fighting us in France may be enormously reinforced before Kitchener's Army is ready to meet it. Austrian troops have already 3" 312 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT done yeoman's work in France and Belgium, especially with their heavy siege artillery. Young I brought the news, conveyed to him by his grandfather, who is a Russian (Finnish) General, aged over eighty, living at Nice, that General von Rennenkampf has not merely been cashiered, but shot as a spy. I have heard of so many generals being shot during the past four months that one is wary of accepting such reports. There seems to be very little doubt that General von Rennenkampf (what a name: "General Race- course!") was responsible for the Russian left failing to connect with the Russian right in the operations round Lodz, and in this respect he must have been the worthy emulator of General Percin, who is also reported to have been shot for a similar betrayal on the French western front at the com- mencement of the war; though, of course, he wasn't. Many people in England, who have never been in touch with the sensational side of European life, and are satisfied with detective stories as represent- ing the best that the modern world has to offer in the shape of intrigue or romance (blind, moreover, to the shoddy rottenness and imbecile sameness of such stories), have a tendency to pooh-pooh the idea that a man occupying a very high position in his country's service can possibly be a traitor. In their silly way they ask what equivalent advantage could he derive from being a spy. They should bear in mind how spies are manufactured. The process is both sure and simple. A likely man is found whose manner of life puts him in frequent need of more money than he normally earns. He is approached in IN FRANCE 313 an apparently above-board way and offered a high price for information which has no special value, and may even be at the general disposition of the public. The object of this manoeuvre is to accus- tom him to the higher scale of expenditure which this new source of income provides. Very soon the "spy in the making" finds that his customers have become more exacting. He has, of course, been carefully watched, and just at the moment when he is known to be short of cash and looking to the new supplies to help him out of his difficulty, he is required to furnish information of real value, and thereby incur a breach of duty. Perhaps he refuses; whereupon he is politely informed that he will be "blown on" to his superiors. He is now between the devil and the deep sea. If he draws back he is as definitely ruined as if he goes on. If he goes on, there is always the chance that he may never be found out. The higher he rises in his profession the more closely are the toils drawn around him, for the greater becomes his fear of the threatened exposure ; and his upward career is often more rapid than it would otherwise have been, for he has unlimited money at his dis- position, which helps him to make friends in high places, and he is aided in many other occult ways. So it may quite possibly happen that an official or an officer holding the highest rank, and com- manding the fullest confidence both of his superiors, if he has any, and of the nation that he serves, may be a spy and a traitor, and every bit as devoted by direst necessity and long habit to the interests of the Foreign Government that pays him as if he wore its uniform and had acquired its nationality. 814 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT One of these days — it is not even yet — the rulers of England will give due importance to the spy problem ; but in the meanwhile they continue to look upon the German aggression as nothing more than a political version of the old woman who lived in a shoe ! Of course, these facts about the spy system are not even new, at least to French people. Over and over again they have been brought to light in different court-martial trials all over Europe during the last half-century, and recently in connection more particularly with the intrigues of a man named, or calling himself, Muller, who was the master-spy of German espionage in this country, with head-quarters in Brussels. His method was such as I have described, and was always the same, and his grip was no less tight, whether it was a General, a Minister, or a common soldier whose conscience he had bought. Young G R , who is looking after my bicycle, came up this afternoon to blow up a tyre. He has at last got a job as a salesman at a bazaar opposite the Place Garibaldi, for which he is paid i franc 50 cts., with working-hours from six in the morning till nine at night. Another victim" of the war ! The Senegalese soldiers are among his most assiduous customers. "They are savages," he says. 'The mere look of some of them is enough to frighten you. What they principally purchase is pipes. And they know all about pipes. They ask, ' What is the price of that pipe, ami ? ' and you reply, ' It's thirty sous.' 'Then I'll give you twenty-five sous for it,' replies the Senegalese, and it is no use your telling him that there are only IN FRANCE 315 fixed prices at the bazaar, he pretends to go away and comes back again, and when the ' patron ' intervenes, he shows him the bracelet he wears which is studded with human teeth, and so he gets, perhaps, a reduction of two sous. Savages ! I tell you they are ! They wear golden rings half-an- inch thick, and gold bangles and armlets under their uniforms, and when the ' patron ' wanted the other day to sell them some brass trinkets electro- plated with gold, they laughed at him and said : 'We, ami, know gold; got gold in our country; no try that on us,' and they gave him a look that froze your blood. The bad ones go about with the bad ones; and the good ones with the good ones; they don't mix; but it is always the bad ones they send to buy the pipes. And the stories they tell ! ' No boche really dead unless head cut off.' They were given a lot of German prisoners to guard, and the sergeant-major, who had to go to head- quarters to make his report, gave strict orders that none was to be allowed to escape. When he came back they said : ' See, sergeant, none of boches escaped.' And there lay all the prisoners with their heads cut off." The Germans have announced long ago their intention of giving no quarter to the coloured troops, so this is only tit for tat. But apart from the Senegalese, the French troops generally are, from what I hear, getting tired of the murdering by the Germans of their prisoners, and secret reprisals are not unfrequent. G R knows a sergeant-major invalided here for the moment, who related to him that when he was at the front his regiment, the rd foot, took a number of 316 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT German prisoners, who were despatched to the rear under escort. When the escort got them into a wood, where no officer was looking on, they brained them all with the butt-ends of their rifles. This was to revenge a number of their comrades whom the Germans had forced, in accordance with their favourite cowardly practice, to march in front of their attacking line. The distinction to be noticed, however, is that while in this case the French soldiers waited till their officers were out of sight, it is generally on the direct orders of their officers that the German soldiers break the rules of war and commit barbarities. Dec. 14th. — When I got home to-night I found the Countess weeping bitterly. She had just received the news that we have been dreading, and, owing to the prediction of her clairvoyante sister- in-law to some extent awaiting, that her nephew, Gustave Rousset, was dead. He had been killed on the 8th of September at Vassincourt near Bar- le-Duc. The news has just been officially con- veyed to the poor boy's mother, who loses her only son, and used to say, mindful of the fatal predic- tion, "I shall not feel he's safe till his military service is over." She had not reckoned with a war! There is nothing much to be done in cases of this kind. The Countess is, for the time being, in- consolable. I could only soothingly suggest that the circumstances strengthened one's belief in a future life, and that young Rousset was now probably in a beatific state. We remembered with a certain satisfaction that it was with us that the lad ate probably the last good meal that he enjoyed on this IN FRANCE 317 earth, and how much he expressed his enjoyment it was now a gentle pleasure to recall. His first visit had been unexpected ; it was when he was stationed at Antibes. The Countess and I had arranged to walk over to Villefranche in the after- noon of that particular Sunday and to dine there. The boy arrived before lunch. I suggested that if the size of the steak were doubled, he might be invited to share it. "He is extraordinarily ugly, and has a huge appetite," said the Countess, "but otherwise he is a good boy. Do you mind?" He certainly was not good looking — a great, heavy head, with a close crop of black hair, and a dark, oily complexion ; but there was a joyous glint in his eye and a gleam from his teeth as he polished up everything on his plate which, combined with a very genial smile, gave him quite a lovable expres- sion. He wore a bayonet with his heavy infantry uniform, blue and red; but apart from this and the fierceness of his appetite, his ways were as gentle as a child's. The Countess' two little girls climbed over him and swung on him during the whole time of his visit, like acrobats on a trapeze, but without apparently incommoding or annoying him in any way. He seemed to wholly acquiesce in their plainly expressed idea that it was for this that he had been chiefly destined by Nature. He ate and drank through it all undisturbed. There was nothing of the swashbuckler about him ; there is not, more often than is popularly supposed, about the southern Frenchman. He gave us plainly to understand that military life was irksome, that he was glad that in a month or two his two years service would be over. He would then revert to 318 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT his trade as a designer of book-bindings. The idea- of war filled him with horror. Fortunately a slight infirmity had caused him to be placed in an auxiliary service in the Military Clothing Depart- ment of his depot, where he checked the outgoings of cloth, so that even if war did break out it was not likely that he would be sent to the front. With a merry smile he confessed that he was fond of life ; he did not want to die. "1 like to feel myself live, especially in this glorious sun ! " One of the bright memories of his boyhood, which otherwise had been rather a hard one, was a yearly visit to Morgiou on the coast not far from Marseilles, where his father went to fish. On one occasion the Countess had gone with them. They lived like Robinson Crusoe in a little hut on the seashore, and had to do everything for themselves. There were no trains or even roads anywhere near, and, except for a few other fishing enthusiasts in similar cabins, no signs of human life. None of the cabins had locks on them, for all the squatters knew and trusted one another. Provisions were brought up on donkey-back, the only means of locomotion otherwise than upon foot, and the Countess laughingly remembered how their party had started out from Marseilles, her nephew himself loaded up almost as heavily as one of the donkeys, poor little chap, for they took everything with them that was needed for the trip, including the food and drink. We made plans for making just such an expedi- tion to Morgiou together next year, when young Rousset's military service should be over. This was the burden of our talk as we strolled IN FRANCE 319 through the lovely wood of Montboron in the direc- tion of Villefranche. There, after an absinthe, the sale of which had not yet been suppressed, young Rousset sat down with us to a dinner at the little cafe opposite the custom-house, which amazed us by its excellence and abundance, considering that the price was only three francs per head. The Countess remembers that there was asparagus, also green peas a l'anglaise, following an excellent "loup," one of the choicest of Mediterranean fishes, a la maitre d' hotel, which preceded a very tender roast chicken. A "creme au chocolat," with fruit and red wine of the country thrown in, concluded the meal and completed the young soldier's happi- ness. A special providence must have been watch- ing over us that day, for on the two subsequent occasions that the Countess and I dined at the same place there was first a decline in quality, and this subsequently developed into complete culinary collapse. The Countess, too, remembers how her nephew pricked his fingers, gallantly try- ing in the dark to pluck her a bunch of the wild, double red and yellow roses which covered the hedges of the country-side ; how she rebuked him for what she considered to be his too forward request that he might be permitted to deposit at the flat a pair of lighter boots than the hob-nailed military pair that he actually wore, so as to be able to undertake similar country excursions with us on every future Sunday. And she remembers how he came again, and for the last time, on a definite invitation, to eat a leg of roast lamb, with peas and potatoes a l'anglaise, and to be initiated into the subtle mysteries of mint sauce, for which he de- 320 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT veloped a most unexpected (and surely unreasoning) passion, and how after coffee taken in a rose-em- bowered garden with the Countess and her children, followed by a stroll in the town, we kept him to an improvised supper of "charcuterie," nearly two pounds of which, specially purchased for him, he consumed, together with most of what was left of the cold lamb, the whole soaked, at his own sug- gestion, in mint sauce, and how he returned to the barracks by the last train with the four slices of ham that had survived from the supper wrapped up in paper. Poor Countess ! Pauvre enfant ! A gentle, genial heart ! And now it is still ! And that is your deed, O Kaiser, O " Deutsche Leute ! " It may seem a little thing, but a vile and cowardly murder was wrought there. It is not because you are guilty of thousands and thousands like it that it is any the less black. And God shall judge you for it, you foul apes. Dec. 15th. — De B has a bonne, who judges what the news of the war is to be by the sound of a locomotive whistle, which she hears at stated intervals from her kitchen. "A bit dismal, this morning, Monsieur le Marquis," she will say to her master. Or, another day, "Quite cheerful this time, Monsieur le Marquis, and a little sarcastic." The extraordinary thing about it, according to de B , is that she is always right! We learned to-day that of 32,000 Senegalese who went to the front, there are only 8,000 left. That the English, too, are waking up to the fact that the war marks the beginning of a new era in most branches of energy and thought, and that the IN FRANCE 821 old oracles are bankrupt, is shown by the poem just published in the London Press by Mr. Alfred Noyes. But with that peculiar obsequiosity which is inseparable to-day from the work of the popular writer, he dares not dot the i's. He prefers to blame everybody, including himself. So he says : "To-night a world that turned from Thee is wait- ing at Thy Throne." Also, "The little Antichrists we praised — the night is on them all. The fool hath said . . . the fool hath said . . ." and so forth. Presumably these dots represent quotations from Bernard Shaw, excised by the censor, which is creditable, no doubt, to the censor's common sense and his good taste. But not everybody, by any means, had forgotten the "Throne," or sub- stituted for it that of Mammon or of Moloch, Mr. Noyes. Dec. 16th. — De B expressed keen satisfaction to-day at Pomels' at the fact, for which he vouches on high military authority, that the French Army is being furnished with three million pairs of boots monthly ! Dec. iyth. — Our experts here are lost in specula- tion as to what real object the Germans can have had in bombarding the English coast and killing a number of non-combatant men, women and children. The most certain effect will be to en- courage recruiting in England, and to confirm the anti-German feeling in America. I note that both the French and the English papers express the belief that the German raid would have been im- possible but for the betrayal of secrets by some traitor in England. x 822 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT Dec. 18th. — B turned up unexpectedly in the morning, on his way to Beausoleil and Menton, where he is the director of the still closed Casino, and his mission is to ascertain in what state they now are after having been occupied by the troops. In the advertisements published by London papers of Monte Carlo, it has been announced that the "Casino will shortly reopen." But B told me that the day before yesterday he had had a personal interview with M. G , the Director of the Surete" Generate at the Ministry of the Interior in Paris, who has the pronouncing authority in this matter, and he told him with great energy and frankness that "no gambling concessions would be accorded to any casino in France until the French Army had entered Berlin." Another high- placed official at the Ministry of the Interior gave him the additional information that the casinos would not be allowed to open for any purpose of amusement until all the German troops had been cleared out of France. H R , who is the owner of the casinos at Beausoleil, Trouville, Menton and elsewhere, is now lying wounded in a military hospital at Alencon. He was present at most of the fierce engagements in the north-west of France. The nervous strain of the fighting has affected him in common with many others, and he still wakes up in the middle of the night, wildly excited, in the conviction that the Germans are attacking his trench. B— - persuaded me to accompany him to Monte ( )arlo. It was a glorious day, like midsummer. In the train were a young Italian girl and her brother, with a huge basket of flowers wedged between IN FRANCE 323 them, which they were conveying to Vintimille, where flowers are now, contrary to all precedent, dearer than in Nice. The girl, fair-haired and blue-eyed, was prettier than any girl that I have yet seen upon the Riviera, and more like a Paris- ienne than the typical Italian. The youth, who had already a double chin, slept, for the previous day had been the festa of their village, Ospedalletti, between Bordighera and San Remo. The girl smiled with exquisite humour dancing in her eyes when we inquired whether he was the "fratello" or the "marito." She told us that they came every day to Nice to purchase flowers, and in addition to the basket in the carriage, they had a thousand francs' worth in the luggage van. The markets which they supplied were the German and the Russian, and they were greatly dependent on the fortunes of the war for their profits. The chief demand was for red carnations, and when the Ger- mans thought they had won a victory, quickly a huge quantity of red carnations was despatched to Berlin ; when it was the Russians who had won, off went the greater part of the red carnations to St. Petersburg, by way of Roumania. When the "official cummuniques " were dumb, then there was but little demand, followed by possible loss. The merry glint in the girl's two eyes played see-saw as it were with these contingencies, these ups and downs of fortune, for herself and the belligerents, her head moving prettily from side to side as she related them, with now a blue sparkle of the eyes upwards, and now downwards, while "fratello" slumbered through with a smile of imbecile con- tentment on his prematurely fat face. 324 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT At Monte Carlo we looked into the deserted Casino. The atrium has now been converted into a gratuitous reading-room. On the wall facing the entrance hangs a huge, coloured map of the mili- tary operations in Europe, which the scene painter of the Casino Theatre drew and coloured in a sur- prisingly short space of time, and it is a most business-like looking map. Monsieur Rose, who is one of the chief inspectors of the Casino (he was formerly the station-master at Monte Carlo), was convinced that the Casino would not be allowed to open until after the war. All the officials have a very downcast look. We went on to the "International Sporting- Club," where we found in the large saloon on the first floor a trente et quarante table in full swing, and two roulette tables. No money is now allowed on the tables, only counters, given in exchange for cash by the croupiers. There was not a very large assemblage, but sufficient to make the place stuffy. Most of the players appeared to be Russians and Poles ; and \Y , whom I met there, said that the previous evening baccarat had been played in Russian, with "niet" instead of "non," and other Russian words substituted for French. The former head chef at the Menton Casino, named Galvini, is now General Joffre's chef, and he has written B an interesting letter describing certain of the camp arrangements at head-quarters. The General Staff is at Chantilly, and they lodge and take their meals at the Hotel Condi (another of the Ruhl establishments). Every day covers are laid for ten at both luncheon and dinner, and as far as possible the chief members IN FRANCE 825 of the staff take their meals together. They number eight in all, including a Japanese officer, a Russian officer, and an English officer. Two of the covers are destined for casual guests. Joffre's personal aide-de-camp, his eminence grise, is an extremely intelligent captain, whose business it is to study maps, while Joffre is away directing operations, and on the General's return submit a programme for the following day. This is then discussed and criticised, and modifications suggested by the seven others during meal-times, before Joffre finally gives his decision. No doubt it was the resemblance between these preparations and the drawing up of a menu which attracted the attention of Monsieur Galvini and earned his approval. TWENTY-FIRST WEEK Dec. 20th. — Poured all day long. B came to lunch. The concierge of the Beausoleil Casino, whom I saw yesterday in artillery uniform, has told B that owing to there not being enough clothes for the troops that are being sent to the front, uniforms and clothing belonging to the men who remain behind are being requisitioned to supply the deficiency. A few days ago he was ordered to give up his puttees, but declined to do so on the ground of their being his personal pro- perty purchased with his own money. The military authorities also wanted to take his boots (I must try to veil this terrible detail from the Marqu'S de B ), but as he had paid twenty-two shillings for them he demanded that sum in exchange, which was refused. He says that the supply department of the Army made an initial mistake by supposing that one rifle was sufficient for one man. It now turns out that five rifles have to be calculated per man. Th , who is secretary-general of the League for Helping Large Families, says that the poverty and distress in Nice, in spite of what some people say, is really very great. In the Italian quarter many families are literally starving. Another cause of extreme poverty is the action of the War Office in calling up a number of men for service, 326 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT 327 thus causing- them to lose their jobs, and then send- ing- them back to their homes on the ground that they are not immediately wanted. In this way the wretched men fall between two stools. They are no longer fed by the army ; their families are no longer able to draw the subsidies accorded to the dependents of soldiers at the front, and the situa- tions they have been obliged to abandon are either no longer vacant, or have been abolished. For the present there is, says Th , practically no work to be obtained in Nice. Large sums have been sub- scribed for charitable purposes, but owing to a lack of concentration they seem to have been greatly frit- tered away. The Nice poor require a quantity of pate (macaroni and such things) in their soup, to be able to nourish themselves and their children on it. Dec. 21st. — Without wishing to attribute too much importance to it, there is nevertheless a curious tendency on the part of the French official "communiques," to which I have already had occasion to refer, to ignore or to minimise the activity in France of the British Army. The in- formation supplied by the official bureau in London is never quoted by the papers here, and references to British feats of arms by the Paris official bureau are exceedingly rare, and to within a recent date have dealt solely with reverses. For instance, to-day the official "communique," miserably written as it always is, even to French eyes, speaks of "trenches lost by the ' troupes britanniques.' " No doubt to-morrow these trenches will be reported as retaken, but why not either give the English full 328 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT and continuous credit for what they are doing, or; leave them definitely alone? Of course, it does not make any difference one way or another what the "communique officiel " says or does not say, but its methods hide, I am convinced, a deliberate attempt which must be inspired from certain politi- cal quarters to influence French opinion, and par- ticularly French provincial opinion, in view of some political move of which the general public has no conception as yet. It looks as if there were an influential party which is anxious to prepare the ground for coming to terms with Germany inde- pendently of the British Government. Rumours to this effect have apparently been current in well- informed circles in London for some days past. I do not think that such a scheme forms part of the present Government programme, or is anywhere near doing so for the present, but it is a possible scheme which a section of French politicians is bearing in mind, and in view of it the more the British Army is made to take a back seat in the conception of the ordinary voter the better. This Germanophile inspiration is probably of cosmopoli- tan origin, and the fact that out of sixteen of the censors who compose the official publication bureau fourteen are of the children of Israel, with, probably, cosmopolitan sympathies, may account in some measure for the special trend of the "commu- niques," and free the Government from any direct blame or responsibility in the matter. For I do not for one moment wish to imply that the accord between the French and English Governments is not of the most loyal description. Far from it. The French Government is the honest mouthpiece IN FRANCE 329 of a people whose friendship and gratitude towards the English is affectionate and enthusiastic beyond words. The people, to a man, to a woman and to a child, love us as brothers. Their admiration for the fighting qualities and personal attributes of our soldiers and sailors is carried to the pitch of amiable exaggeration. They love England with a fervour and a discernment which many Englishmen would do well to imitate. But the war has not changed the mentality and methods of the French profes- sional politician. It has brought out unsuspected qualities of the highest order from among the French people, but the Clemenceaus, the Hanotaux and the Deschanels have not altered by one iota. When, after the war is over, there is a general reckoning up, many of the politicians who have hitherto had the ear of the public, or of a portion of it, will be in danger of losing their occupation. They will have to discover a new raison d'etre. This, as they are nearly all lawyers or "spouters" of one kind or another, versed in the arts of chicanery, they will best find in the domain of disputation, and it is to the international field that they will instinctively turn, for there they can easily pitch on a theme with the help of which they can furbish or patch up their tarnished or tattered reputations for patriotism. They may be counted on to trouble the international waters the better to fish in them, and this is what some of them are trying to do already. A letter from S— — , with Kitchener's Army at Bulford, Wilts. He says: "I am pleased to tell you I shall spend Christmas at home. I am going to make the best of it; we have politely been told 330 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT that it might be our last. We are expecting to be in France at the end of January, or the early days of February." This last piece of information will rejoice my friends here ; for it is beginning to be felt that only fresh troops in large numbers can break through the deadlock in Flanders, and enable the Allies to drive the Germans out of northern France and Belgium. Dec. 22nd. — A long walk round the valley of the Magnan, with a splendid panorama over the sea, and distant mountains topped with pure white snow. There is still a good deal of flower culture in progress, but on the whole the impression is of fields lying fallow, and of the absence of the husband from the husbandry. The Pope is being a good deal discussed in this most Catholic city of Nice. His instructions to the priests to take an interest in wounded prisoners, and when needed to write their letters for them, is proof of a good heart, but it is not all that was to be expected from the Vicar of Christ, who is the most widely accredited mouthpiece of doctrinal Christianity throughout the world. It is felt that his Holiness has not quite risen to the occasion, which was a tip-top one. After all, he has got nothing to lose and everything to gain by clearly denouncing the atrocities perpetrated by the Ger- mans, and perpetrated, if you please, in the name of God and of Christian civilisation. The Marquis de B , who is that curious anomaly an anti- clerical Spaniard, holds that the Pope is merely a poor little Italian politician seeking a "combina- zione," and quite incapable of acting as the mouth- IN FRANCE 331 piece of his Divine Master. If this be so it is a pity; for now or never Rome has a chance of proving that the rock of Peter is the one fortress in the world, against which the famous 420 is as powerless as matter against mind. The Pope's suggestion that the belligerent armies should call a truce for Christmas would have been brilliant as coming from the late Mr. Stead, for instance, or any one of the English halfpenny organs ; but from the Pope ! To have forgotten that the Russians keep Christmas at a different date from the rest of Europe is a mistake into which so accomplished a theologian as the late Pius X would never have fallen ; while if it was not a mistake, but merely a cunning but unsuccessful endeavour to entrap the Greek schismatics into a tacit acknowledgment of their heretical position, it is worse still. The wounded, even among those that one sees in the streets, are terrible to look upon, many of them. This afternoon there came into the Cafe M , where I was seated with the Countess, an officer in mufti, with an iron bar passing right round his jaw and fixed to two iron plates at the back of his head. He had the haggard, brilliant eyes of a man who had passed many sleepless nights. Presum- ably his jaw had been broken. The Countess re- lated, a propos, that our butcher, who was shot in the stomach at the beginning of the war, has been for some time back again at the front, and in a letter to his wife has described the mental agony he went through when he found himself buried up to the neck in the earth thrown up by the explosion of a percussion shell. Neither by profession nor 332 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT temperament is he sentimental, but the thought that* he would die, literally buried alive, made him cry for the first time since he could remember. He was rescued by an engineer party specially detached for these disinterments, which are very frequently needed. Some of the poor fellows in a similar predicament are not found. The butcher also said that for the last three weeks he had been fighting in the wet trenches with only one boot and a slipper. It is forbidden under pain of being shot to remove a pair of boots from one of the dead, so that he has no remedy. What would de B say if he heard this? Dec. 23rd. — A Roumanian paper has referred to the rumour that the Japanese have offered a large number of troops to France in exchange for Indo- China, and in an article entitled "Japanese Inter- vention " M. Hanotaux, a writer in the Press on international questions, and formerly Minister of Foreign Affairs, deprecates an acceptance on the part of France of military assistance from Japan other than that which she is already furnishing. There is one point which M. Hanotaux overlooks, which is that Japan is not the direct ally of France, but of England, and that if she were to be called upon to add her armies to those of the Allies for service in Europe, this would presumably be at the summons of England, in accordance with treaty conditions, and not on a purely French or Japanese initiative. That England would approve of such a bargain as that referred to above is for many reasons improbable. M. Hanotaux's remarks, therefore, are a little premature. His criticism generally is open IN FRANCE 333 to some suspicion, for during his term of office as Minister of Foreign Affairs he was intensely Anglo- phone and proportionately Germanophile ; and I well remember Alphonse Daudet, whose friend he was (Daudet had been influential in securing his election to the French Academy), telling me with regretful disapproval of Gabriel Hanotaux's attempts to convert him and his son Leon to the love of Ger- many. Hanotaux, both while Minister of Foreign Affairs and for a long time afterwards, made no secret of his conviction that the best policy for France would be to accept a political entente, and even alliance, with Germany, and to look upon England as the common enemy. Of course, there came a time when, the Entente Cordiale having proved its quality, such an idea could no longer be expressed by an ex-Minister of Foreign Affairs; but "the man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still." Hanotaux will never forget, and I doubt whether he will ever forgive, the rattling he got on more than one occasion, when Minister of Foreign Affairs, from the then British Ambassador, the late Lord Dufferin. "Allons done ! " he once rudely replied to some remark made by the Ambassador. "We don't say 'allons done ! ' to the Queen," was the answering smack. Recently, of course, M. Hanotaux has thought fit to raise his voice in paeans of praise over the heroic performances of the British Army, and all that is "very fine and large." But personally I cannot rid myself of an impression, when reading M. Hano- taux's expositions of what France ought and ought not to do, that the writer is still casting a lingering love-glance across the Rhine. In his wise and 334 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT prudent councils to his fellow-countrvmen, of which his most recent advice not to encourage an excess of military zeal on the part of Japan is a fair speci- men, I never find anything of which Wilhelmstrasse would seriously disapprove. Dec. 24th. — Christmas Eve ! The markets and shops were so crowded that the Countess told me it was impossible to get served. Lunch was seriously late in consequence. The buying capacities of the majority of the population of Nice have not been so greatly affected by the war as to produce any very visible signs. A respectable turkey weighing five pounds cost nine francs twenty-five centimes. The Russians still seem to be making strategic move- ments to the rear to cover Warsaw, but we have not lost confidence. The weather has turned cold. The declaration of the Government in the French Chamber makes it plain that the rumours of separate negotiations for peace between France and Germany must be considered as worthless, so far at any rate as the present Ministry is concerned. The Prime Minister categorically declared that France would abide by the treaty signed with England and Russia on the 4th of September, which binds the contract- ing parties not to entertain any peace proposals except in concert. Events march so rapidly that I must confess to having forgotten the exact date of that particular agreement. September the 4th ! And a very significant date too ! The morrow of the day on which the Government left Paris for Bordeaux. One of the English daily papers describes M. IN FRANCE 385 Deschanel, the President of the French Chamber, whose vibrating speech preceded the Ministerial Declaration at Tuesday's sitting, as " a tall, virile man who seemed emblematic of the energy and living force of his country." We have already had from one of the same group of papers M. Clemen- ceau described as representing "the fighting spirit of France," but this description of M. Paul Deschanel is even more unconsciously ironical. In the first place, he is a short, dapper man, with no physique to speak of ; and secondly, his reputation for amiable and even elegant poltroonery is a house- hold word in the social and political circles of Paris. So much was this the case some years ago that Ml Deschanel's friends seriously advised him to arrange a duel with a parliamentary colleague, so that the jocular stories about his personal courage might be in some measure disposed of. In France, as everybody knows, there are duels and duels, but even the mildest form of duelling, that which pre- vails among antagonists of the purely political order, always possesses, even with the best of good will on both sides, an element of potential accidental danger. It was M. Clemenceau, the representative of "the fighting spirit of France," whom M. Paul Deschanel, with a rashness which surprised his most indulgent friends, undertook to provoke. But the outcome of the experiment was not all that he had hoped. No sooner had the seconds joined the swords of the two champions than M. Deschanel began so rapid a strategic movement to the rear that M. Clemenceau, who has a nasty sarcastic way about him, tired of the vain pursuit, stopped short, shouldered his sword like a rifle, turned right about 336 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT face with mock military precision, marched wi-th his back to his adversary to the point of departure, and then, with a polite salute, cried out, "Et main- tenant, M. Deschanel, je vous attends ! " (And now, M. Deschanel, I'll wait for you !) The prophecy made by the genial old Nicois, proprietor of the Hotel du Grand Balcon at La C'alifornie, that German soldiers would be induced to surrender en masse by merely showing them a piece of bread-and-butter, has literally come true. A letter from a Nicois soldier has reached here in which he describes this scene. A German soldier, unarmed, approached a French trench, and surren- dered on the offer of a "tartine." After he had eaten it he craved permission to return to his own lines and bring back a few friends. This was granted, and he shortly afterwards reappeared with eighty other German soldiers as famished as himself. A significant blank in the morning papers is explained this evening by the publication in the Corriere della Sera, of Rome, of the text of a note issued by General Joffre to his troops, informing them that the German Army has received orders from the German General Staff not to take any more French or English prisoners, and to system- atically "finish off" the enemy's wounded. These orders were found on the body of a German officer killed in action. According to the Italian paper, there is no doubt whatever as to their authenticity, and i here are proofs that they are being carried out to the letter. General Joffre adds no comment to tins simple statement of the facts; but his silence is eloquent. The Corriere della Sera adds that IN FRANCE 837 the French censors have suppressed the publication of the note in the French Press in order not to cause additional grief and anxiety to the relatives of soldiers at the front, especially at this season. This is a nice and typical Christmas gift from the adepts of German "kultur" to the civilised Christian world. Dec. 25th. — A mild and in the early morning over-clouded Christmas Day. The continued in- efficiency of the postal service leaves me without any letters from friends in England, the only Christmas greeting that I have received to-day being in the form of a bill, with an urgent demand for payment, from a London publisher ! The Countess, and her two children for the first time, lunched with me off the respectable turkey pur- chased yesterday, a very quiet, homely little gather- ing, " Ded£ " (five) almost too shy to eat, but "Ayette" (nine) discovering, to her mother's great astonishment, a "grande maniere" worthy of the oldest court traditions, which, combined with an imperturbable appetite, impressed us very much. In the afternoon I came across our old friend the English German Jew banker, with the Ameri- can accent, whom I had met on the first day of mobilisation, as genial and as full of intelligent curiosity as ever. "What do you think of the Russians?" he asked. "Who can withstand them ? " I replied, quoting his own remark about the Germans five months ago. "Ah, indeed," he said, "that's what / think." He added, "I cannot make the Germans out at all — their dishonest tac- tics, their lack of scruple ! So different from what Y 338 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT I have always been led to think of them. For _in America, where I lived for thirty years, the German was always looked upon as 'a very good citizen,' always honoured his cheque." "But those were not the real Germans," said a friend with him, an interesting old Parisian financier, named Cahen, who had founded that very successful paper Les Annates Politiques et Litteraires, and had intro- duced the automatic opera-glass into the Paris theatres, "those were German Jews." The Christmas gift from the authorities to the people of Nice is the permission for the cafes to once again set out tables on the pavements. Why they should ever have been forbidden to do so is something of a mystery. The only plausible reason that I ever heard was that, in the event of a revolu- tion, the absence of all obstruction, such as these tables would create, would make it easier for the troops to clear the streets. It is certainly strange that the fear of public disturbances has maintained a stronger grip upon the administrative mind in Nice than in almost any other city in France, in- cluding, oddly enough, Paris. To the ordinary visitor Xice appears to be whole-heartedly French, and if you listen to the oldest inhabitant you -are certain to be told that the Nicois abhors the Italian. But the administrative mind is haunted by the belief that Xice still hankers after reunion with Italy, or that at any rate a portion of its native population s. This is why great difficulty was incurred last year in securing a licence for an Italian comic opera company to perform at the Casino Theatre in Italian. Who could tell whether behind that innocent dramatic manifestation there might not IN FRANCE 339 have been a deeply laid plot to encourage Separatist tendencies? I had given an appointment to the Countess at the T Cafe, but after waiting three-quarters of an hour, as she had not turned up and the place was becoming uncomfortably crowded, I went away. At dinner the Countess explained that she had been hindered in reaching the cafe by the endless flow of talk, mingled with lamenta- tions, of Madame R , the mother of the R boys, who cannot bear the idea of either of her sons doing their duty as soldiers. I fairly lost my temper. "In future," I said, "Countess, don't waste your time and your sympathy listening to that wretched woman. Tell her as roughly as you can to ' get out.' Such selfish impudence is in- credible. Here are you with an only son at the front, whom you are every bit as fond of and devoted to as she can be with respect to her sons, and instead of trving to cheer you up and console you, she expects you to listen to all her miserable apprehensions about what hasn't even begun to happen. You bravely gave your son permission to go, and he bravely went. You are a couple of heroes, both of you, and a credit to a noble country. But what is this woman? What does she expect? That your son should fight to protect her hearth and home and her and her children's lives, while she and they look on and hug themselves at the thought that some one else is getting all the knocks. With her vulgarity and meanness she has poisoned the minds of her two boys, who but for her might be brave lads. I heard one of them say the other day, with a sort of knowing look, when he heard 840 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT of a detachment going to the attack 600 strong arrd coming back eight, ' That's no business for me ! ' Your son never talked like that, nor you either." "She's a mother ! " said the Countess pitifully. " A mother ! Just so, and because she's a mother she ought to know better than to come and worry you with her troubles, which aren't troubles, when you are eating your heart out because you haven't got news of your boy. The last you heard from him was that the shells were flying round, and that he didn't feel afraid of them. Did she have anything to say about that ? Not she. She came round to tell you that she had made her son, who is champion weight-lifter of the Midi, give up his job for fear he might catch cold in the head. And at any moment you may get bad news [a choke from the Countess]. Roger may be wounded [another and louder choke], however slightly — he won't be, I'm convinced. But what does she care ? He's fighting for her, however, as much as for you or any one else. She reminds one of the cowardly old goose in the story of the Peacock and the Peahen in the Arabian Xights, and the next time she calls just lead her politely to the door, and when you have wished her good-bye and she has got her back to you, give her a thundering kick in — the rear- guard!" It was high time to try to make the Countess laugh. TWENTY-SECOND WEEK Dec. 26th. — A deliciously lovely day, warm and with a cloudless blue sky. About eleven I was coming out of my dark-room, elated with the success of a difficult development, when I heard Made- moiselle C cry out to me — I hardly grasped at first what she said — "The Countess's son is wounded ! " And there in the middle of a group was the poor Countess rocking herself with grief, "Ayette" howling, "Ded6" in tears, the dog beg- ging for sugar, as she always does when there appears to be something abnormal in the atmo- sphere, and Mademoiselle C holding out to me a postcard upon which Roger had written in pencil, "Chere Mere, Je suis blesse, mais pas trop grave- ment. Je t'enverrai les details de l'Hopital." Here, indeed, was a tragic epilogue to our con- versation of last night ! The card bore no local post-mark, beyond Indre et Loire, but the picture of Orleans which it bore on the reverse side showed plainly enough that it was to the Orleans Military Depot that the wounded lad had been taken. What was to be done now ? Snatch up the Countess in my arms and try to coax her tears away ? However natural, fraternal, paternal, or avuncular the move- ment might have been, that would not, perhaps, have done in the presence of Mademoiselle C . Little by little, by dint of arguing that a wound 34i 842 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT was perhaps the best thing that could have hap- pened to the boy (only just eighteen), that his con- dition could not be very serious if he were still able to write, that the very handwriting was firm and flourishing, without a shake, that no doubt it would be possible for him to finish his treatment in a Nice hospital, where his mother could be more with him than ever before, we got the poor Countess to dry her eyes. "He makes no complaint," she cried proudly. "He is a brave boy ! " And she, too, is a brave little woman. But "not too seriously " is a suspicious wording. A friend to-day showed me a letter he has received from General Gallieni, whom he knows well, and expects to join in Paris before long. Gallieni tells him that when he took over the governorship of Paris he found that nothing whatever had been done for the defence of the capital. He was obliged to im- provise a defence in two days, get together the broken remnants of the army of Paris, demoralised by a long and disappointing retreat and greatly attenuated, and then with the help of every kind of motor conveyance, automobiles, motor-omnibus and taxicabs make a sortie as far as the canal de l'Ourcq, and there engage the army of General von Kluck,* which he was instrumental in beating, and thus saved Paris from being invested. The General adds thai as a fitting wind up to his long military career he would not be sorry to leave his bones on the battle-field. This letter, of course, constitutes a serious charge of negligence or incompetence 'inst General Michel, the Military Governor of Paris whom Gallieni succeeded. X , quoting other information communicated by General IN FRANCE 343 Gallieni, said that General Michel's friends try to excuse him on the ground that he caught cold in the stomach when leading the march past of the troops at the Longchamp review on the 14th of July, and was ill up to the date of the declaration of war. But the reply to this apparently is that General Michel, who owed his appointment to political influences, had not the courage, or perhaps the per- mission, to draw the attention of the Government with sufficient vigour and insistence to the fact that Paris was in a helplessly undefended state. General Galliemi's known independence and energy had always prevented him from being appointed to the Military Governorship of Paris, and it was only in the final and desperate emergency brought about by the arrival of German troops within a tram-ride of the gates of Paris that the Cabinet had recourse to him. General Gallieni being a professing Catholic and therefore not a Freemason, had against him the — at that time — all-powerful "loges," who have always insisted on the Military Governor of Paris beinsr a nominee of their own on account of the political importance of his post, for it is practically in his power to make or mar a revolution. General Saussier proved this in the latter days of Boulang- ism. However, my friend is sure that General Gallieni will allow no political considerations to affect him in any way in what he considers to be the execution of his duties, and should any minister proffer observations to him which were not to his liking "he is the man to respond by prodding the imprudent statesman in the bowels with a bayonet." This looks as if there will be a sensational political reckoning up when the war is over. 344 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT The New York Herald publishes Lord Fisher's Christmas message to kin "across the sea," in which "the First Sea Lord says (he is compelled to say) that the hope and good cheer that the Christmas spirit may bring humanity almost solely depends upon a hundred million of Christian men and women in America realising what ' neutrality ' means." If this means anything (literally, of course, it has no meaning), it must mean that in Lord Fisher's opinion America must come to the rescue if Christmas is to bring any hope to Great Britain. It is a very alarming message, but the most alarming thing about it is the way it is worded, coupled with the quotation of a poem by Mr. Watson, of which the First Sea Lord has underlined the last two lines. Poetry has an old-established and professional first claim upon lunacy, but when a First Sea Lord takes to counter-signing and underlining it and using it as a message to the United States! "Tom Bowling," one would have thought, or "Black-Eyed Susan" would be more in Lord Fisher's line than Mr. Watson. So far I have not seen this message referred to or reproduced in any English or French paper, but I can hardly think that it can have been invented by the New York Herald, though I sincerely hope that it has been, for the sake of everybody concerned. Dec. 27th. — A post-card from D who is on the banks of the Yser. He writes : " War is simply a rather violent game, but it is the most fascinating (' souriante ') thing in the world, because all the prorogatives (' pre^ances ') of the invisible world are observed and respected in it." IN FRANCE 345 The streets were made almost impassable by groups of young women and boy scouts selling the Belgian flag in aid of the Belgian refugees. One flag in your button-hole did not protect you from further demands. "But you walk on two legs, Monsieur, not on one," was the burden of one young lady's appeal. The promenade des Anglais was much more densely crowded than this time last year, and the crowd, in spite of what is said here, was not much less smart, or rather only a little more shabby. With the place of the absent Germans (a dowdy lot) taken by Belgian refugees and very strong reinforcements of soldiers, with a small proportion of wounded, the gaps are more than made up. The Pope's Christmas message to the belligerents appears to be summed up in the words " Lay Down Your Arms ! " To use the French expression : "C'est trop et ce n'est pas assez ! " (It's too much and not enough.) Dec. 28th. — "The fighting spirit of France," in the person of M. Clemenceau, is enthusiastically in favour of the intervention of a Japanese Army in Europe. A correspondent in the Liberte, ostensibly writing from the front, also declares that the stale- mate between the opposing armies in Western Europe can only be successfully combated by masses of fresh "troupes de choc," and Japan alone of the allied nations disposes of these for the time being. Before M. Viviani made his ministerial declaration there were rumours of a meeting of the Chamber to be held in camera, doubtless to discuss the question of bargaining with Japan for troops, 346 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT but nothing' came of this unusual, but not uncon- stitutional project. I still hold to the belief that Great Britain would look unfavourably on the intervention of a Japanese Army on a large scale for reasons connected with her problems in the East and her American diplomacy, and the danger is that to justify this objection she may be induced, with disastrous results, to hurry Kitchener's Army into the field before it is ready. In fulfilment of the military regulations at the front, it takes — according to a letter from a Xicois soldier — forty-eight hours to make out a postal order. It takes almost as long at the post office here. The day that war broke out it was categorically stated that M. Samain of Metz, President of the "Souvenir Francais" had been summarily shot by the Germans, and it was proposed to change the name of the Rue de Berlin in Paris to "Rue Samain," for the news provoked the utmost indignation. It is now certain that both M. Samain and his brother are prisoners at Ehrenbreitstein. Certainly it is a most mysterious thing that this false information, calculated to irritate the French public, and so little to the credit of the Germans, should have been so promptly disseminated. It is difficult to believe that it came from a German source. I recall the cries of "Shame ! " with which it was received when displayed on the transparencies of the Petit Nicois, an officer in uniform standing next to me, exclaim- ing, "O, les salauds ! " (Oh, the swine!) \Yhose interest was it that this stupid lie should have been told ? Some one clearly who had a very strong pull with the newspaper agencies. When the war is IN FRANCE 347 over it is sincerely to be hoped that a careful investi- gation of these mysterious occurrences will be made and the guilt fixed on the right shoulders. The story, if it can be fully related, must throw a flood of sensational light upon the inner workings of the war and the occult influences which affected its initial phases. A letter is published to-day by Senator Caze- neuve, senator of the Rhone, which is almost a reproduction of General Gallieni's letter shown to me two days ago, confirming it in every particular. It corrects an omission in the account published by the Daily Telegraph of the battle of the Marne. The sixth army, composed of four corps, which attacked Von Kluck's army on the Ourcq and defeated it, "was organised in two days by General Gallieni, and composed of raw recruits enrolled in the army of Paris, an African division, and divisions which had undergone a retreat and suffered in it. With the aid of five thousand motor-cars and taxis, requisitioned at a moment's notice, and the suburban railway lines, this rapidly organised sixth army was hurled with fuminat- ing effect upon the rear and right flank of the Ger- man right wing, under the command of General Manoury, acting under the orders of General Gallieni, in full accord with the commander-in-chief and in concert with the other generals of the armies at the front. The magnificent strategic movement of the army of Paris decided the memorable success of the day." This fixes one of the most important points in the history of the war. One of the Anglo-Parisian papers that reaches here announces that the official German Press 348 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT Bureau has instructed the German editors not -to attack Churchill, as he is useful to Germany on account of his "happy-go-lucky dilletantism." This makes the third public man in England, with Lords Fisher and Ilaldane, to whom the grace of Ger- many has been gratuitously extended : a notable trio. The poor Countess now knows how her nephew Gustave Rousset met his death at the battle of Vas- sincourt. She has been shown a long letter from his "pal," who saw and recognised his dead body lying between the two armies, after the Germans had been finally beaten back. The battle lasted from the 8th to the ioth of September, and Gustave must have been one of the first to fall. "It was necessary," writes this soldier, "to retake Vassin- court, occupied by the enemy, in order to stop their march on Bar-le-duc. At dawn on the 8th of September " (this was the day that Gustave was killed), "we left a wood to go in the direction of Vussincourt. As we approached in dispersed order as sharpshooters, the bullets began to whistle round us. We advanced by bounds, flattening ourselves on the ground at intervals. The Germans held the village firmly. They had placed mitrailleuses on the roofs and opened loopholes in the walls of the houses. However, the Chasseurs Alpins, who were in front of us, succeeded, at the cost of unheard-of efforts, in getting into Vassincourt. We installed ourselves in the orchards situated at the entrance to the locality, and could perfectly hear the dull sound produced by the dum-dum bullets used by the Germans since the beginning of the campaign. ' We held ourselves ready to enter the village in IN FRANCE 849 our turn. All of a sudden one, two, three shells exploded at two metres' distance from my section, and soon there was a perfect hail of shrapnel. A thick smoke prevented us from seeing in front of us. The Germans were bombarding Vassincourt, and our position became untenable. We retired. At dawn the next morning we attacked more success- fully. This time our artillery supported us in vigorous fashion. Three times we were called upon to charge with the bayonet, in company of the Alpins. The Germans did not retire willingly, and we were obliged to put forth all our strength to dislodge them. We had to take Vassincourt, and at ten o'clock it was ours. "The night of the 9th to the 10th of September was somewhat disturbed. With the rain pouring down we were called to arms time after time. We rested an hour or two, rifle in hand and bayonet fixed. Ye gods, what a state we were in ! Soaked to the bones, our clothes discoloured by mud, we were ugly enough to give the Prussians a fright. "Towards seven o'clock, reveillez — with varia- tions. The 75 looked after that. We advanced slowly in the direction of the enemy's trenches. We came near to a copse, and then saw a whole band of Germans emerge from the trenches without arms. They were Bavarians, recognisable by their little caps. There were at least fifty of them. They advanced towards us, their arms in the air, with the evident intention of surrendering. As soon as they got to within thirty metres of our first line, they threw themselves flat on their stomachs, while behind them started up ' kamarades,' and this lot was thoroughly well armed, I can tell you. And 350 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT the firing began. The mitrailleuses that they had brought with them joined in. " ' Forward, with the bayonet ! ' "We charged furiously, but again the Germans retired as fast as they could to take refuge in their holes. "The day of the ioth of September was wholly decisive. At noon we occupied a big wood, where we awaited events. All of a sudden our 75 's, having accurately got the enemy's range, began to pour a hail of shells. For two hours we rained death on them. Then the cannonading diminished and we advanced, whilst the enemy began a clearly marked movement of retreat. . . . It was then that I noticed lying midway one of our dead. It was my pal, Gustave Rousset, stretched on his back, with his arms crossed above him, shot, no doubt, through the heart. We saluted with a gulp in our throats and passed on. . . . Show his mother this letter." The Countess has no doubt now that her nephew died a soldier's death, bravely and worthily. It consoles her in some measure, for there was a fear that he might have been involved in the panic which, according to Senator Gervais, overtook the 15th Corps in the earliest operations of the war. Nothing of the kind. His memory will be trea- sured as that of a real hero, a simple martyr among thousands of others, who gave up his life to his country without swagger or any warlike boastings, just answering the call of duty which was also the roll-call of Death : " Gustave Rousset, soldat d'in- fanterie de deuxieme classe? Present!" He might have been a corporal or a sergeant; IN FRANCE 351 they wanted to make him one. But his gentle good nature was such that he hated the idea of com- manding comrades or having to report them for punishment. So he preferred to remain at the bottom of the military ladder. Such was Gustave Rousset. Adieu, poor, humble, delicate, genial soul ! Who would have thought as we strolled through that Montboron wood only a few weeks ago, and you took risks of falling on the slippery red hill-side with your huge equipment boots to pick some tall anemone that had caught the eye of the Countess, that in so brief a space you would be lying on the shell-swept field of Vassincourt, with a ruffian's cowardly bullet through your heart, and your sightless eyes turned up to Heaven where your destiny had been written ? Dec. 2gth. — A blood-red post-card, supplied apparently by the hospital authorities, reached the Countess this evening from her son, who after, for her, an agonising silence of five days, now finds time to inform her that he has received a "pruneau " (a "prune" is slang for bullet) in the fleshy part of the shoulder, and is getting on well. "Je la coule douce a l'hopital," is his expression, which means that he is enjoying a "dolce far niente" at the hospital, is taking life easily. The Countess is overjoyed, though she fears that the wound will be so quickly healed that her son will be sent back to the front before she can get to see him, and then all the anxiety will begin over again. I think he might have let her know at once that he was not dangerously hurt, and so saved her from worry. But I suppose that a wounded man must be forgiven 852 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT ■U certain mannerisms; moreover, it appears that this is Roger's way. Dec. 30th. — Further news of Roger. It was in a bavonet charge that he received a bullet in the shoulder. A metal flask containing rum which he had with him was pierced through, and he is keeping it as a souvenir; but the pocket of his jacket which contained a small Lyons sausage and his purse with fifteen francs, all the money he had with him, was carried away, and his belt was also shot off. He was the least seriously wounded of the whole battalion. It is characteristic of the manner in which the postal service is being conducted in France, that the Countess' son has had time to get wounded and to be sent back to a hospital in France before receiving a soldier's trousseau, which she des- patched to him some weeks ago. Things that I have sent to friends at the front have also failed to reach them. One of the revelations of the war is that every department in the hands of civil govern- ment functionaries has proved itself to be unpre- pared for great emergencies. How nearly France was ruined in consequence of this is only too plain. If Germany was able to march up to the gates of Paris in thirty days it was because her mobilisation was ready, and that of France was not. All the auxiliary departments of France were inefficient or deficient; her ambulance service was inadequate, and still is to a great extent — ample proof has been furnished of that; she was lack- ing in heavy artillery and in ammunition; her transport service was fatally slow; her clothing IN FRANCE 353 department was not a patch on the German — every Frenchman that I have talked to who saw the Germans arrive across the frontier in the early days of the war has told me of the unwilling admira- tion that was wrung from him by the perfection of the German equipment. It is all the more to the credit of the French Army that in spite of this slackness on the part of the civilian administration, it was possible to improvise an effective fighting- organisation sufficient to stem the flood of the advancing Huns, and to convert defeat into victory. But it was a very close shave. Politics, of course, are mainly to blame, though not more in France than in our own country, for the unreadiness which the Allies have suffered from, entailing the loss of thousands of lives which might otherwise have been saved, and the destruction of property of incal- culable value. Democracy is as ideal a form of government as any other (the ideal of all govern- ments is perfect), but in practice it always means the supremacy of the rhetorician, the conscienceless lawyer, the bluffer, the humbug, and the man of money, to the exclusion of all real and incorruptible values of national energy. President Wilson's somewhat peremptory mes- sage to Great Britain to "quit" interfering with American export trade on pretence of seizing con- traband ladings has evidently "crossed" Lord Fisher's Watsonic appeal to the American people to "quit" neutrality so as to be able to rush to the rescue of Great Britain before it be too late to earn the undying glory of having done so. Should she fail in this Great Britain would come out of the fight torn but still smiling, and America would z 354 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT be able to claim no share in that smile. It is often the bad luck of missives that "cross" that their purposes cross too. My French friends are curious to know why Admiral Poore should have been superseded by a superannuated admiral on half-pay, as if there were no admiral on the active list fit to take his place. The same criticism applies to Lord Fisher's own appointment. Politics, of course, is the only answer, strengthened by that instinctive but dan- gerous confederacy which prevails between the superannuated. Nice, the birth-place of Garibaldi, is naturally much affected by the death on the battle-field of his grandson Bruno, fighting as a volunteer on the French side with the other Garibaldians. If it were not for the pouring rain, the public demonstrations in honour of the Garibaldian tradition in the Place Garibaldi, and around the statue of the great liberator of Italy, would be more imposing than they are likely to be. The Nicois does not like the wet, and this is the only town that I have ever seen where the cabmen drive with umbrellas open when it rains. But more important than the demonstrations in Nice will be the impression pro- duced by Bruno's heroic death in Italy. It will make Italian neutrality more and more difficult to maintain, and any practical sympathy for the German cause entirely out of the question. Thus the year closes with at least one very striking and determining incident which marks the beginning of a new phase in the situation at a no distant date. Dec. 31SL — The last day of the year was dull and IN FRANCE 355 wet to begin with, clearing up, however, in the afternoon. There will be no festivities to celebrate the New Year, no reVeillon, as it is called, which means sitting up till midnight to drink the New Year in ; there will be no paying or receiving of visits in the official world, and no sending out of visiting-cards by post; this last departure from the annual rule being to avoid further congesting a postal service, which has already got hopelessly out of hand. It is curious to compare the present attitude of the people of Nice with that of 1870, when life was much less disturbed by the war, and the theatres went on playing imperturbably. That we now have a finer sense of decency shows that civilisation in this respect has been, in France at any rate, on the upward grade during the past half century, and this is something to be proud of. But though the brewing of punch and the eating at midnight of smoked pig's nose, to ensure pros- perity during the coming year, will be confined to the neutrals, there will be one parlour game played in spite of the suppression of all others, in which everybody will join, and that will be the game of "devinette." The one problem which we shall all be required to guess the solution of will be : When will the war end? After careful consideration, and bearing in mind as much as I can remember of the thousand-and-one reasons adduced in favour of the war lasting one, two, or three years, or even more, I have decided what my guess will be — IN SIX MONTHS I even have a bet of fifty centimes on it with Madame N . I am aware that the Germans 356 DIARY OF AN ENGLISH RESIDENT have recently reduced their bank rate, that on the whole they remain (as do all the other belligerents, oddly enough) confident of victory, that they still have plenty to eat and drink, and a sufficiency of ammunition, that they are not unprovided with money, that they occupy practically the whole of Belgium, and a little more than three per cent, of France, that their navy is almost intact, that they have not yet given a trial to their air fleet, which may be assuming huge dimensions, that their heathen belief in the omnipotent superiority of the tribal German god over the God of Love remains officially unshaken, but I none the less register my guess that the war will be over in six months, and I maintain my bet with Madame N : she has even refused since yesterday to increase it to sixty centimes. After five months of the war, and at this close of the year (in spite of the unreasonableness of it, everybody pauses to glance back and adjust his outlook at this wholly conventional full stop) the facts that stand forth in boldest relief are that the German plan of attack has failed on all sides, and that the defensive operations substituted for it have been gradually but surely weakening for a month past. The Germans made the war; they cannot now win it; they must lose it, for a draw is out of the question. The burden of the Crown Prince's and the German Generals' New Year's messages has been "Stick it! " But how long can they "stick it " ? I may be wholly wrong, but six months seem to me and to the Com- mittee of Nations here to be a liberal allowance. Then, so we take it, will go up the first German howl, a howl of agonised disillusion, a howl for IN FRANCE 857 mercy, the howl of the beaten, frightened, drunken, starving bully, a horrible clamour mingling beer- sodden sobs of self-pity with craven lies, the pro- testations, indignant denials and appeals to God to attest his innocence, of a panic-stricken burglar and murderer in the grasp of Justice. Already a notable change has come over the facial expression of Germany. The German look of triumphant self- confidence has gone. The grin of low cunning, of satisfied hypocrisy, the arrogance of the blood- thirsty brute, glorying in the cowardly security of superior strength, have given place to blank dis- may. The German cheeks are as white as the paper upon which the felon German Government prints its daily budget of lies. The German eyes are fixed and troubled with nightmare visions of tortured and murdered women and children and harmless old men, and of the vengeance that is in store. The writing is visible upon the wall, and it is a writing that is not signed by the German General Staff. The rats, headed suitably and seasonably by "Die Zukunft," 1 are already sniffing at the portholes of the doomed ship. 1 The Future. THE END Printed in Great Britain by Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, BRUNSWICK ST., STAMFORD ST., S.E., AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK. AN INDISPENSABLE REFERENCE BOOK THE MOST UP-TO-DATE BOOK ABOUT THE WORLD'S NAVIES FLEETS of the WORLD With over ioo Full-page Photographs of Typical Fighting Ships — Battleships, Cruisers, Destroyers, and Submarines of the great Navies Size 9 in. x 5 \ in. 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